The Snow Queen tsq-1

by Joan Vinge

  “Almost a month.” She put another piece of dried meat into her mouth, let the juices begin to dissolve, easing a throat closed by sudden empathy. “But — I might have stayed longer, maybe all my life. If things had been different.”

  “Then you liked it there?” There was no sarcasm now, only a hunger. “Where were you? What did you see?”

  “The Thieves’ Market, mostly. And the star port city.” She sat cross legged, pulling her feet into place, and let her mind see only the days that had feasted her eyes; see Elsevier and Silky and Cress alive and sharing her feast; the journey down to the planet surface, and KR Aspundh’s ornamental gardens… “And we drank lith and ate sugared fruits… Oh, and on the screen we saw Singalu raised to Tech.”

  “What?” Gundhalinu sat against the wall, gasping with incredulous delight. She noticed that he was missing a tooth. “Ye gods, I don’t believe it! Old Singalu? You’re making that up, aren’t you?” Laughter was the best medicine.

  She shook her head. “No, really! It was an accident. But even KR was glad.” And she remembered tears welling in Elsevier’s eyes, in her own… Tears rose again suddenly; tears of grief this time.

  “Dropped in on KR Aspundh.” He shook his head, wiped his own eyes, still grinning. “Even my father didn’t just drop in on KR Aspundh! Well, go on, what next?”

  Moon swallowed. “We… we talked. He asked me to stay a few days. He’s a sibyl, you know—” She broke off.

  “And I know there are a lot… of things you’re not telling me,”

  Gundhalinu said quietly. He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to know why the hell KR Aspundh has tech runners to tea. But you could have had anything you wanted there — the life, all the things you couldn’t have here. Why? Why did you leave all that, and risk everything to come back here? I can see it in your eyes, you wish you hadn’t.”

  “I thought I had to.” She felt her broken nails dig into her palms. “I never wanted to go off world in the first place. I was going to Carbuncle to find my cousin… But when I got to Shotover Bay I met Elsevier, and then the Blues tried to arrest us—”

  “Shotover Bay?” A peculiarly chagrined expression settled over his face. “It’s a small universe. No wonder I keep thinking… I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

  She leaned forward with a smile starting, studied his face in turn. “No — I guess I was too busy running.”

  He twitched his mouth. “No one’s ever called it memorable. So you were going to Carbuncle. But after five years, you aren’t still going there? Whatever happened to your kinsman is ancient history, by now.”

  “It’s not.” She shook her head. “While I was on Kharemough I asked, and the Transfer told me I had to return, that it wasn’t finished yet.” The cold silence of the void grew loud inside her, squeezed her breath away. “But ever since I’ve come, everyone I’ve cared about I’ve destroyed, or hurt…” She hunched over, pulled herself into a hiding place.

  “You? I don’t — understand.”

  “Because I came back!” She let the words come, making him see her for what she was, every act and every retribution that had brought her relentlessly to this place… “I made it happen! I made them do it, it was all for me. I’m a curse — none of it would have happened without me, none of it!”

  “You wouldn’t have seen it happen; that’s all. Nobody rules anyone else’s fate — we don’t even control our own.” She felt his hand hesitantly on her shoulder. “We wouldn’t be prisoners here; I wouldn’t be alive now to say… you’re wrong to blame yourself, if we did. Would I?”

  She raised her head. “But the mers, Lady, even the mers… they were safe on Ngenet’s land, until I came!”

  “If Starbuck and the Hounds were poaching, it was no fault of yours. It was nobody’s doing but the Queen’s. I’d say you must be thrice blessed, not cursed, if all you got… out of an encounter with Starbuck was a sore throat.” He began to cough, pressing his own throat.

  “Starbuck?” Slowly she uncoiled, stretching her legs, gathering the courage to ask: “Was he — the man in black? What is he?” Not asking, Who is he?

  Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows, took his hand away from her softening shoulder. “You’ve never heard of Starbuck? He’s the Queen’s consort: her Hunter, her henchman, her chief advisor when she deals with us .”… her lover.”

  “He saved my life.” She traced the scab of the healing wound across her neck, finding the strength to ask, “Who is he, Gundhalinu?”

  “No one knows. His identity is kept secret.”

  He loved you once, but he loves her now. The words of the Transfer reverberated. “Now I understand. I understand everything! . It’s true.” She looked away, and away; but the emerald eyes behind the black executioner’s mask followed her, followed’ What is?”

  “My cousin is Starbuck,” whispered.

  Gundhalinu said calmly, “He can’t be. Starbuck is an off worlder

  “Sparks is one too. His father was one. He always wanted to be like them, like the Winters… And now he is.” A monster. How could he do this to me?

  “You’re jumping to conclusions. Just because Starbuck was afraid . to kill a sibyl—”

  “He knew I was a sibyl before he ever saw my sign!” She struck back at his insufferable conviction. “He knew me; I know he did. And he was wearing the medal that was Sparks’s.” And he was killing mers. She pressed her knotted fist against her mouth. “How could he? How could he change into that?”

  Gundhalinu lay down again, uncomfortably silent. “Carbuncle does that to people. But if it’s true, at least he had enough humanity left to spare your life. Now you can forget about him; forget about . one problem, at least.” He sighed, staring up into shadows.

  “No.” She pushed herself to her feet, moving in a stiff circle be side the cot. “I want to get to Carbuncle more than ever. There has to be a reason for what he’s done; if he’s changed, there’s a way to change him back.” Win him back. I won’t lose… not after I’ve come so far! “I love him, Gundhalinu. No matter what he’s done, no matter how he’s changed, I can’t just stop loving him.” Or needing him, or wanting him back. He’s mine, he’s always been mine! I won’t give him up — no matter whose he is, or what she’s made him into… appalled by the truth, made helpless by it. “We pledged our lives to each other; and if he doesn’t want that any more, he’s going to have to prove it to me.” One hand made a fist, the other clung to it.

  “I see.” He smiled, but there was uncertainty behind it. “And I always thought you natives led dull, uncomplicated lives,” unwitting condescension crept back, making him comfortable. “At least on Kharemough love has the courtesy to know its place, and not tear our hearts out of us.”

  “Then you’ve never been in love,” resentfully. She crouched down by the pile of bright-and-dark cloth Blodwed had left them; picked up a piece distractedly. It was a tunic, sewn with wide bands of woven braid.

  “If you mean all-consuming, sense-clouding, lightning-struck love — no. I’ve read about it…” His voice softened at the edges. “But I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it exists in the real universe.”

  “Kharemoughis don’t exist in the real universe.” She took off her parka, pulled open the seal of her dry suit and climbed out of it, rubbing her skin-sore, abraded arms, scratching her back. Letting him watch, aware that he tried not to; taking perverse pleasure in his discomfiture. She pulled the soft, heavy tunic on over her skimpy un dersuit, struggled into the leggings and fur-lined boots, buckled the wide painted-leather belt around her hips. She touched the hand woven braid that ran down the tunic front, along the hem — all the colors of sunset against the night-blue wool. “This is beautiful…” Astonishment pushed up through her darker preoccupation. She realized suddenly that the braid, the garment, were very old.

  “Yes.” Gundhalinu’s expression was not the one she had expected. But she saw the embarrassment lying below it, and felt a pinprick shame at hi
s shame.

  “Gundhalinu—”

  “Make it BZ.” He shrugged away his self-consciousness. “We’re all on a first-name basis here.” He gestured at the animals.

  She nodded. “BZ. We’ve got to find—” She broke off again, hearing someone enter the passageway. The lock rattled and the gate swung back. Blodwed came through it, trailed by a small, rosy cheeked child and carrying a box. She pulled the gate shut with her foot. The animals stirred and peered out at her all along the walls; tension made their movements furtive. The toddler wandered toward the cages, sat down unexpectedly on the floor in front of one. Blodwed ignored him, coming on across the room.

  Moon glanced at Gundhalinu, saw the life go out of his eyes and the animation out of his face, leaving bleak resignation. But Blodwed beamed as she dropped the box, stood before him, inspecting him like an inquisitor. “I don’t believe it, he’s all right! See—” She caught his sleeve, tugged on his arm. “I got a real sibyl just to keep you alive, Blue-boy.” He pulled free, sitting up. “Now you can finish reading to me.”

  “Leave me alone.” He put his feet over the cot’s edge, propped his head on his hands. He began to cough, sullenly.

  Blodwed shrugged; looked back at Moon, scratching her beaky nose. “You okay too? I thought you were both dead this morning.” A bare hint of deference crept into her voice.

  Moon nodded, controlling her own voice, picking the words cautiously. “I’m all right… Thank you for bringing me clothes to wear.” She touched the front of the tunic. “This is very beautiful.” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of it.

  Blodwed’s sky-blue eyes were full of pride for an instant; she glanced down. “They’re just old stuff. They belonged to my great grandmother. Nobody wears those things any more; nobody here even knows how to make them.” She tugged at the hem of her dirty white parka, as though she really preferred it. She rummaged in the carton, pulled out a fist-sized cube of plastic. Unintelligible noise filled the air like ram. Blodwed began to hum a tune, and Moon realized that she was picking it out of the radio static. “Reception really stinks back in this cave. Of course it didn’t help that old Blue boy here tried to take this apart and make a transmitter.” She made a face at him. “Here’s your dinner,” tossing a can onto the cot. A sudden shriek behind them jerked Moon around. The toddler stood wailing, waving his hands by the cages. “Well, don’t stick your fingers in there, damn it! Here’s yours.”

  Moon caught the can as it arced into her hands, sat down and pulled the lid up. It vaguely resembled stew. She watched Gundhalinu open his own can, with a twinge of relief. “Is… he your brother?” to Blodwed.

  “No.” Blodwed moved away, carrying handfuls of meat and a box with an animal’s picture on it. She made the circuit from tethered creature to caged one, giving them each their evening meal. Moon watched them nutter up or cringe away from her rough movements, slink forward again after she passed.

  Blodwed came back, scowling, sat down with her own can. The little boy appeared beside her, pulling at her jacket and whining. “Not now!” She pushed a spoonful of stew into his mouth. “You know anything about animals?” She glanced at Moon, looked back over her shoulder at the cages.

  “Not these.” Moon looked away from the boy, whose face was as perfectly pink and white as a porcelain figurine.

  “Then you’re going to do what you did yesterday again — only this time tell me about the animals.” She glared, expecting a refusal. “I think some of them are sick too. I — I don’t know how to take care of them either.” Her gaze broke. “I want to know how.”

  Moon nodded, swallowing the last of her stew, and got slowly to her feet. “Where did you get all these animals?”

  “Stole them from the spaceport. Or got them from traders, or out trapping… the elf fox and the gray birds there, and the conics. But I don’t even know the names of the rest.”

  Moon felt Gundhalinu’s eyes trail her with dark accusation, ignored it as she walked toward the closest of the animals, the hardest one to face — the shivering pouch of wrinkles that squatted on a nest of dried grass. It blubbered obscenely, showing her a wide sucker mouth as she opened the cage door. Biting back her disgust, she crouched before it, offered it a handful of food pellets at arm’s length, holding very still.

  Its burbling hysteria gradually died away, and after another endless moment it floundered forward, inch by inch, to touch her hand tentatively with its mouth. She shuddered; it scuttled back, worked its way forward again. It took the pellets one by one from her palm with great delicacy. She dared to stroke it with her free hand; its brain like convolutions were smooth and cool to her touch, like the surface of a smocked satin pillow. It settled contentedly under her hand, making a sound like bubbles popping.

  She left it slowly, went on to the pair of lithe, pacing carnivores in the next cage. Their ears flattened, their tusks showed white against the black-on-black patterning of their fur. There was something feline about them, and so she began to whistle softly, creating the overtones that had made cats come purring into her lap at home. The long, tufted ears flicked, swiveled, tuned like radar… the animals came toward her almost reluctantly, drawn by the sound. She offered them her fingers to sniff, felt a thrill of pleasure when an ebony cheek brushed her hand in a gesture of acceptance. The cat creatures sidled along the bars, demanding her touch with guttural cries.

  She moved on more confidently to the leather-winged reptile with a head like a pickax; the feather-soft oblongs with no heads at all; the bird with emerald plumage and ruby crest that lay listlessly in the bottom of its cage. She lost track of time or any purpose beyond the need to communicate even to the smallest degree with every creature, and earn for herself the reward of its embryonic trust… Until she reached the end of the circuit at last, found the little boy lying asleep on Blodwed’s knee, and Blodwed staring up at her in silent envy.

  Moon glanced away, understanding the look in one final moment of empathy. “I — I’m ready to begin Transfer, Blodwed; whenever you say.”

  “How did you do that?” Blodwed’s words struck her like blows. “Why do they come to you, and not to me? They’re my pets! They’re supposed to love me!” The boy woke at the sound of her anger, and began to cry.

  “That should be obvious,” Gundhalinu muttered sourly. “She treats animals like human beings, and you treat human beings like animals.”

  Blodwed stood up furiously, and Gundhalinu stiffened; but no words came out of her, and she did not bring up her white-knuckled fists to strike him.

  “Blodwed… they’re afraid of you. Because…” Moon struggled, fitting reluctant words to her thoughts. “Because you’re afraid of them.”

  “I’m not afraid of them! You were afraid of them.”

  Moon shook her head. “Not that way. I mean… I’m not afraid to let them see I care about them.” She twisted a braid.

  Blodwed’s mouth worked, her scowl faded. “Well, I feed them, I do everything for them! What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Learn to be — gentle with them. Learn that… that gentleness isn’t… weakness.”

  The little boy clung to Blodwed’s leg, still crying. She looked down at him, put her hand on his head hesitantly, before she followed Moon back to the cages.

  Moon began the circuit again with the brain creature, luring it into her hands, making it the focus of her senses. “Ask me about them. Input—” She heard Blodwed’s question and carried it down…

  “…analysis!” She found herself sitting on the floor, exhausted, with the snub-nosed elf fox cub suckling her braid. She smoothed its thick white crest, removed the braid from its mouth and its pinprick claws from her tunic with great care, held it out to Blodwed in both hands. “Here,” faintly, “take him.”

  Blodwed reached out, uncertainty slowing her movements; the cub did not struggle or protest as Moon slipped it into her waiting hands. Blodwed settled it against her stomach, held it there almost timidly. She giggled as it worked its way
in through the opening of her parka and settled against her side. The toddler sat at her feet reaching up after it with one hand, his thumb in his mouth.

  “Did I tell you — enough?” Moon glanced away, along the circle of bare cages, still overlaid by the shadowy green and gold of an imported-pet shop somewhere on another world. So far away… all of us so far away from home.

  “Lissop, starls, batwing…” Blodwed named them all. “I guess I even know what’s wrong with those,” pointing. “I don’t have the right food.” Her face pulled down. “But you did good,” encouraging again. She held the cub close. “Didn’t she, Blue?”

  Gundhalinu smiled, grudgingly, and made a salute. “A noble—” He broke off.

  Three pairs of eyes looked up together at the sound of someone else entering the passageway. The gate swung open, and a bearded, heavy-faced man entered. The animals shrank back along the walls.

  “What do you want, Taryd Roh?” The surliness was back in Blodwed’s voice.

  “The shaman wants this fixed.” He held out a fragile-looking instrument that Moon did not recognize. “Tell the Tech there to get started earning his keep.”

  “He’s too sick.” Blodwed stuck out her chin.

  “He’s alive,” Taryd Roh grinned, swiveling his gaze to Moon. “And this pretty little doll you brought him would put life back in the dead. How’d you like to visit my tent, little sibyl?” A rough hand brushed her bruised cheek, hurting her.

  Moon backed away, filled with disgust. He laughed and went on past her.

  “Listen, Turd,” Blodwed said, “you keep away from her! She really has the power—”

  He sneered. “Then what’s she doing here? You don’t believe that superstitious crap, do you, Tech?” He set the broken instrument down in front of Gundhalinu, and a set of tools. “Just don’t have too much fun. Because if this isn’t working by tomorrow, I’ll make you eat it.” He flicked the tarnished insignia on Gundhalinu’s collar; Moon saw Gundhalinu’s thin face go gray and slack.