The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “But how could the Old Empire put sibyls everywhere, if no god did? Weren’t they only humans?”

  “They were.” He reached out to the bowl of sugared fruits in the mil table center. “But in some ways they had the power of gods. They III could travel between worlds directly, in weeks or months, not years —they had hyper light communicators and star drives And yet their Empire fell apart in the end ... even they overextended themselves. Or so we think.”

  But even as the Empire fell, some remarkable and selfless group had created a storehouse, a data bank, of the Empire’s learning in every area of human knowledge. They had hoped that with all of humanity’s discoveries recorded in one central, inviolable place, they would make the impending collapse of their civilization less complete, and the rebuilding that much swifter. And because they realized that technical collapse might be virtually total on many worlds, they had devised the simplest outlets for their data bank that they could conceive of—human beings. Sibyls, who could transmit their receptivity directly to their chosen successors, blood to blood.

  Moon’s fingers felt the scar on her wrist. “But ... how can someone’s blood show you what’s in a—a machine on some other world? I don’t believe it!”

  “Call it a divine infection. You understand infection?”

  She nodded. “When someone is sick, you stay away from them.”

  “Exactly. A sibyl’s ‘infection’ is a man-made disease, a biochemical reaction so sophisticated that we’ve barely begun to unravel its subtleties. It creates, or perhaps implants, certain restructurings in the brain tissue that make a sibyl receptive to a faster-than-light communication medium. You become a receiver, and a transmitter. You communicate directly with the original data source. That’s where you are when you drown in nothingness: within the computer’s circuits, not lost in space—or with other sibyls living on other worlds, who have answers to questions the Old Empire never thought to ask.” He lifted his glass to her with an encouraging smile. “All this verbalizing makes me dry.”

  Moon watched the trefoil turn against the rich, gold-threaded brown of his robe; saw her own turning silently, exiled, on a hook in an air-conditioned room somewhere high overhead. “Is it the disease that makes people go mad, then? It’s death to kill a sibyl ... death to love a sibyl—” She broke off, touching the cool stones along the table edge.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is that what they say on Tiamat? We have that saying too; though we don’t take it literally any more. Yes, for some people infection with the ‘disease’ does cause madness. Sibyls are chosen for certain personality traits, and emotional stability is one ... and of course a sibyl’s blood can transmit the disease. So can saliva—but usually the other person must have an open wound to become infected. Obviously it isn’t ‘death to love a sibyl,” with reasonable care, or you wouldn’t have seen my daughter today. I suppose the superstition was fostered in order to protect sibyls from harm in less civilized societies. The very symbol we wear, the barbed trefoil, is a symbol for biological contamination; it’s one of the oldest symbols known to man.”

  But she heard nothing after—”It isn’t death to love a sibyl? Then Sparks ... we don’t have to be apart. We can live together! El sevier!” Moon hugged the old woman until she gasped. “Thank you! Thank you for bringing me here—you’ve saved my life. Between the sea and the sky, there’s nothing I won’t do for you!”

  “What’s this?” Aspundh leaned on his fist, bemused. “Who is this Sparks? A romance?”

  Elsevier pushed Moon away to arm’s length and held her there gently. “Oh, Moon, my dear child,” she said with inexplicable sorrow, “I don’t want to have to hold you to that promise.”

  Moon twisted her head, not understanding. “We were pledged, but he went away when I became a sibyl. But now, when I go back I can tell him—”

  “Go back? To Tiamat?” Aspundh straightened.

  “Moon,” Elsevier whispered, “we can’t take you back.” The words rushed out like a flight of birds.

  “I know, I know I have to wait until—” She beat the words away.

  “Moon, listen to her!” The shock of Cress’s broken silence stopped it.

  “What?” She went slack in Elsevier’s grip. “You said we would—”

  “We’re never going back to Tiamat, Moon. We never meant to, we can’t. And neither can you.” Elsevier’s lip trembled. “I lied to you,” looking away, searching for an easy way, finding none. “It’s all been a monstrous lie. I’m—sorry.” She let go of Moon’s arms.

  “But why?” Moon brushed distraughtly at her hair, strands of cobweb tickling her face. “Why?”

  “Because it’s too late. Tiamat’s Gate is closing, becoming too unstable for a small ship like ours to pass through safely. It ... hasn’t been months since we left Tiamat, Moon. It’s been more than two years. It will be just as long going back.”

  “That’s a lie! We weren’t on the ship for years.” Moon pushed up onto her knees as comprehension melted and ran down around her. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because I should have done it at the beginning.” Elsevier’s hand covered her eyes. Cress said something to Aspundh in rapid Sandhi.

  “She isn’t lying to you, Moon.” Aspundh sat back, unconsciously separating himself from them. Elsevier translated his words dully. “Ship’s time is not the same as time on the outside. It moves more slowly. Look at me, look at Elsevier—and remember that I was younger than TJ by many years. Moon, if you returned to Tiamat now you would have been missing for nearly five years.”

  “No ... no, no!” She struggled to her feet, wrenching loose as Cress tried to hold her down. She crossed the room to the window, stood gazing out on the gardens and sky with her forehead pressed hard against the pane. Her breath curtained the glass with ephemeral frost, making her eyes snow blind “I won’t stay on this world. You can’t keep me here! I don’t care if it’s been a hundred years—I have to go home!” She clenched her hands; her knuckles squeaked on the glass. “How could you do this to me, when you knew?” turning furiously. “I trusted you! Damn your ship, and all your gods damn you!”

  Aspundh was standing now beside the low table; he came slowly toward her across the room. “Look at them, Moon.” He spoke quietly, almost conversationally. “Look at their faces, and tell me they wanted your life to ruin.”

  She forced her unwilling eyes back to the three still sitting at the table—one face inscrutable, one bowed with shame, one winking with the track of acid-drop tears. She did not answer; but it was enough. He led her back to the table.

  “Moon, please understand, please believe me ... it’s because your happiness is so important to me that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” Elsevier’s voice was thin and brittle. “And because I wanted you to stay.”

  Moon stood silently, feeling her face as rigid and cold as a mask. Elsevier looked away from it. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.” Moon forced the words out past frozen lips. “I know you are. But it doesn’t change anything.” She sank down among the pillows, strengthless but still unforgiving.

  “The wrong has been done, sister-in-law,” Aspundh said. “And the question remains—what will you do to repair it?”

  “Anything within my power.”

  “Our power,” Cress said.

  “Then take me home, Elsevier!”

  “I can’t. All the reasons I gave you are true. It’s too late. But we can give you a new life.”

  “I don’t want a new life. I want the old one.”

  “Five years, Moon,” Cress said. “How will you find him, after five years?”

  “I don’t know.” She brought her fists together. “But I have to go back to Tiamat! It isn’t finished. I can feel it, it isn’t finished!” Something resonated in the depths of her mind; a distant bell. “If you can’t take me, there must be a ship that can. Help me find one—”

  “They couldn’t take you either.” Cress shifted among the cushions. “It�
��s forbidden; once you leave Tiamat, the law says you can’t go home again. Your world is proscribed.”

  “They can’t—” She felt her fury rising.

  “They can, youngster.” Aspundh held up his hand. “Only tell me, what do you mean, ‘it isn’t finished?” How do you know that?”

  “I—I don’t know.” She looked down, disconcerted.

  “Just that you don’t want to believe it’s finished.”

  “No, I know!” suddenly, fiercely certain. “I just don’t know-how.”

  “I see.” He frowned, more with consternation than disapproval.

  “She can’t,” Cress murmured. “Can she?”

  “Sometimes it happens.” Aspundh looked somber. “We are the hands of the sibyl-machine. Sometimes it manipulates us to its own ends. I think we should at least try to learn whether her leaving has made any difference, if we can.”

  Moon’s eyes fixed on him in disbelief, like the rest.

  Cress laughed tightly beside her. “You mean it—acts on its own? Why? How?”

  “That’s one of the patterns we’re still trying to relearn. It can be damnably inscrutable, as I’m sure you know. But anything able to perform all its functions would almost have to possess some kind of sentience.”

  Moon sat impatiently, only half listening, half understanding. “How can I learn that—whether I have to go back?”

  “You have the key, sibyl. Let me ask, and you’ll have the answer.”

  “You mean ... No, I can’t! I can’t!” She grimaced.

  He settled onto his knees, smoothing his silver-wire hair. “Then ask, and I will answer. Input ...” His eyes faded as he fell into Transfer.

  She swallowed, taken by surprise, said self-consciously, “Tell me what—what will happen if I, Moon Dawntreader, never go back to Tiamat?”

  She watched his eyes blink with sudden amazement, search the light-dappled corners of the room, come back to their faces, to hers alone—”You, Moon Dawntreader, sibyl, ask this? You are the one. The same one ... but not the same. You could be her, you could be the Queen ... He loved you, but he loves her now; the same, but not the same. Come back—your loss is a wound turning good flesh bitter, here in the City’s heart ... an un healing wound ... The past becomes a continuous future, unless you break the Change ... No further analysis!” Aspundh’s head dropped forward; he leaned against the table for a long moment before he looked up again. “It seemed to be—night, there.” He took a sip from his drink. “And the room was full of strange faces ...”

  Moon picked up her own glass, drank to loosen the invisible hand closing on her throat. He loved you, but he loves her now.

  “What did I say?” Aspundh looked toward her, clear eyed again, but his face was drained and drawn.

  She told him, haltingly, helped on by the others. “But I don’t understand it ...” I don’t understand it! How could he love ... She bit her lip. Elsevier’s hand touched hers lightly, briefly.

  ““You could be Queen,”“ Aspundh said. ““Your loss is an un healing wound.” I think you had a true intuition ... your role in a greater play has been left unfilled. An inequality has been created.”

  “But it’s already happened,” Elsevier said slowly. “Doesn’t that mean it was meant to happen?”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “I don’t pretend to know. I am a technocrat, not a philosopher. The interpretation is not up to me, thank the gods. Whether it’s finished or not is up to Moon.”

  Moon stiffened. “You mean—there is a way I can go back to Tiamat?”

  “Yes, I think there is. Elsevier will take you, if you still want to go.”

  “But you said—”

  “KR, it isn’t possible!”

  “If you leave immediately and use the adaptors I’ll provide, you’ll get through the Gate safely, and before Tiamat is cut off for good.”

  “But we don’t have an astrogator.” Elsevier leaned forward. “Cress isn’t strong enough.”

  “You have an astrogator.” His gaze moved.

  Moon stopped breathing as all their eyes reached her at once. “No!”

  “No, KR,” Elsevier said, frowning. “You can’t ask her to endure that again! She couldn’t if she wanted to.”

  “She can—if she wants to enough.” Aspundh touched his trefoil. “I can help you, Moon; you won’t have to go through it unprepared this time. If you want your old life back, and your power as a sibyl, you can—you must—do this thing. We can’t face down all our night fears; but you must face this one, or you’ll never believe in yourself again. You’ll never use the precious gift you carry; you’ll never be anything at all.” The sharp voice stung her. He folded his hands, resting them on the table.

  Moon shut her eyes, and the blackness swallowed her whole. But it isn’t finished yet. I was meant to be something more! And he was meant to be with me. He can’t be lost, he wouldn’t forget me; it isn’t finished ... Sparks’s face burned away the darkness like a rising sun. It was true, she had to do this; and if she did she would know that she had the strength to solve any problem. She opened her eyes, rubbed her trembling arms to still them. “I have to try.” She saw the half-formed grief in Elsevier’s deep-blue eyes—and the half-formed fear. “Elsie, it means everything to me. I won’t fail you.”

  “Of course you won’t, dear.” A single nod, a ghost of smile. “All right, we’ll do it. But KR—” she glanced up. “How will we back again without her get?”

  His own smile twitched with secret guilt. “With false papers, which I shall also provide. In the chaos of the final departure on Tiamat, you’ll never noticed be, I’m sure, even—Silky.”

  “Why, KR, you secret sinner.” She laughed weakly.

  “I don’t it amusing consider.” His face did not. “If I teach this girl all that a sibyl should know and then send her back to Tiamat, I will an act of treason be committing. But in doing this I obey a higher law than even the Hegemony’s.”

  “Forgive me.” She nodded, chastened. “What about our ship?”

  “It will a fitting monument in space to my late brother’s impossible —dreams be. I told you that you’d never for anything want, El sevier. Do this thing, and you’ll never again need to smuggle.”

  “Thank you.” A spark of rebellion showed in her eyes. “We were planning to retire, anyway, if this last trip hadn’t such an utter disaster been. This gives us one more opportunity our wares to—deliver, after all.”

  Aspundh frowned briefly.

  Cress unfolded his legs with leaden effort as the others began to stir. Looking at him, Moon found him looking at her; his glance hurried on, caught at Elsevier like an orphan’s hand. He grinned, badly. “I guess this is good-bye, then, Elsie?”

  Moon stood up, helped him to his feet while the realization registered around the table. “Cress—”

  “Consider this my payment on the debt we owe you, young mistress.” He shrugged.

  Elsevier turned to Aspundh, but Moon saw his face tighten with refusal even before the question formed. “It won’t be hard for him another ship to find; astrogators are highly in demand in your-trade, I’m sure.”

  “There are smugglers and smugglers, KR,” Elsevier said.

  “You mean they might not all a ship with a man blacklisted for murder want to share?” Aspundh’s expression turned to iron.

  Moon let go of Cress’s sleeve.

  Cress flushed. “Self-defense! It’s in the record, self-defense.”

  “A drugged-up passenger challenged him to a duel, KR. The man would him have killed. But the rules don’t any exceptions make ... Really, do you imagine that I’d a ship with a murderer share?”

  “I can’t even why you married my brother imagine.” Aspundh sighed in defeat. “All right, Elsevier; though you press my promise to you near the breaking point. I suppose I a shipping line somewhere own that can an astrogator take on.”

  “You mean that? Oh, gods—” Cress laughed, swaying like a reed. “Thank you, old mas—citizen!
You won’t sorry be.” He glanced at Elsevier, a long, shining glance full of gratitude.

  “I hope not,” Aspundh said; he moved past Cress to Moon’s side. “And you won’t me sorry make either, will you?”

  In his eyes she saw the grim reflection of what her failure would mean, not to herself alone, but to the others. “No,” firmly.

  He nodded. “Then stay with me for the next few days, while the ship is readied, and let me you all a sibyl should know teach.”

  “All right.” She touched her throat.

  “KR, must she—”

  “It’s for her own good, Elsevier—and for yours—that I her here keep.” He lifted his head slightly.

  “Yes ... of course.” Elsevier smiled. “You’re quite right, of course. Moon, I—” She patted Moon’s hand, looked away again. “Well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. Never mind.” She went on toward the door, not looking back to see Moon’s outstretched hand. Silky followed her wordlessly.

  “Well,” Cress grinned, half at her, half at his feet. “Good luck to you, young mistress. “You could be Queen.” I’ll tell them I knew you when.” He kept her gaze at last. “I hope you find him. Goodbye.” He backed away, turned and went out after the others. Moon watched the empty doorway silently, but it remained empty.

  Moon sat alone in the garden swing, giving it momentum with the motion of her foot. Overhead the night sky sang, a hundred separate choirs of color transfiguring into one. Moon rested her head on the pillows, listening with her eyes. If she closed them she could hear another music: the sweet complexities of a Kharemoughi art song drifting out through the open doors onto the patio, the counterpoint of insects chirping in the shrubs, the shrill and guttural cries of the strange menagerie of creatures that wandered the garden paths.

  She had spent this day like the ones before it, practicing the exercises that disciplined her mind and body, watching the information tapes that KR Aspundh gave to her, learning all that was known to the Hegemony about what sibyls were, and did, and meant to the people of their worlds. The sibyls of this world attended a formal school, where they were sheltered and protected while they learned to control their trances—as she had learned, more uncertainly, from Clavally and Danaquil Lu on a lonely island under the sky.