The Snow Queen

12

“You’re the owner of this vehicle?” Jerusha stood beside the hovercraft on the quay, her breath frosting in the frigid night air. She frowned her bad humor at the big man who leaned against it with the same false self-possession the tech runners in the bar had displayed. Gundhalinu stood beside her, rising and settling on his heels with barely controlled frustration.

“I am, as I plainly have every right to be.” His voice was like crunching gravel. The man gestured abruptly at his face; the light was poor, but he was obviously an off worlder — from D’doille, she guessed, or maybe Number Four. “Have you come all the way from Carbuncle just to give me a parking ticket, Inspector?”

Jerusha grimaced, using her irritation to disguise her discomfort. She kept her arms crossed tightly against her heavy coat, nursing the one that the girl in the bar had struck with a mug. Her right forearm was a white-hot star, burning furiously at the center of her body’s shivering universe; the pain nauseated her, only the intensity of her anger kept her mind clear. An old woman and a handful of misfits had made an ass of her, and eating at her was the suspicion that it was because shed wanted them to. Damn it, her place was to enforce the law, not rearrange it to suit herself! And at least this one hadn’t gotten away. “No, Citizen Ngenet, we’ve come to accuse you of attempting to buy embargoed goods.”

His face was the picture of resentful surprise. Gods, what I wouldn’t give to just once see one of them put up his hands and say, “I admit it.”“

“I’d like to know on what evidence you’re making the accusation. You’re not going to find—”

“I know we won’t. You didn’t have time to make the deal. But you were seen in the presence of one of the off worlders who escaped us.”

“What are you talking about?”

She could almost believe that he didn’t know. “Female, age roughly seventeen standard years, pale hair and skin.”

“She’s no smuggler!” Ngenet pushed away from his craft, glaring.

“She was with them when we went to make the arrest,” Gundhalinu said. “She struck the inspector, she ran with the rest.”

“She’s a Summer from the Windwards, her name is Moon Dawntreader. I gave her a ride, and I left her at the inn because—” He broke off, Jerusha wondered what he was afraid to say. “She wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“Then why did she help them escape?”

“What the hell would you do, if you were fresh from Summer and two off worlders burst in on you with guns?” He paced two agitated steps between them. “What in the names of a thousand gods would you think, if you were her? You didn’t hurt her—?”

Jerusha grimaced again, twisted it into a smile. “Ask it the other way around.” She wondered with more interest why he was trying to protect the girl. His mistress?

“You said they all escaped?”

Gundhalinu laughed sourly. “For a man who doesn’t know anything, you’re damned concerned about what happened tonight.”

Ngenet ignored him, waiting.

“They all escaped. Their craft cleared Tiamat space without damage.” Jerusha saw the expression on his face turn into something that was not relief.

“All? You mean she went with them?” The words came out as though each one was alien on his tongue.

“That’s right.” She nodded, tightening her good hand over her other elbow, pinching off the nerve paths. “They took her off. You mean to tell me she really was an innocent bystander, a local?”

Ngenet turned away, struck the frost-rimed windshield of the hovercraft with a gloved fist. “My fault—”

“And mine. If we’d held onto them she would have been all right.” And that’s what happens when you start trying to change the rules.

“What was she to you, Citizen Ngenet?” Gundhalinu asked. “More than a passing stranger.” Not a question.

“She’s a sibyl.” He looked back at them. “It doesn’t matter if you know that now.”

Jerusha raised her eyebrows. “A sibyl?” The wind off the bay clutched her in icy talons. “Why — would that make a difference to us?”

“Come now, Inspector.” His voice turned bitter, like the wind.

“We’re law officers. We enforce the law” — liar—”and the law protects sibyls, even on Tiamat.”

“Like it protects the mers? Like it protects this world from progress?”

She saw Gundhalinu stiffen like a hunter scenting his prey. “How long have you been living in the outback, Citizen Ngenet?”

“All my life,” with a kind of pride. “And my father before me, and his father… This is my homeworld.”

“And you don’t like the way we’re running it?” Gundhalinu made it a challenge.

“Damn right I don’t! You try to choke the life out of this world’s future, you let a maggot like Starbuck wipe his boots on you while he slaughters innocent beings for the gratification of a few filthy-rich bastards who want to live forever. You make a mockery of ‘law’ and ‘justice’—”

“And so do you, Citizen.” Gundhalinu stepped forward; Jerusha could see everything that had locked into place inside his head. “Inspector, it seems likely to me that this man is involved in more serious criminal activities than just smuggling. I think we ought to take him back to the city—”

“And charge him with what? Behaving like an arrogant fool?” She shook her head. “We have no evidence that would justify that.”

“But he—” Gundhalinu gestured, accidentally struck her arm.

“Damn it, Sergeant, I said we’re letting him go!” She lost his startled face in a burst of pain stars Blinking, she refocused on Ngenet instead. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you off completely, Ngenet. Your presence here and your attitude are questionable enough to warrant my revoking your permit to operate this hovercraft. I’m impounding it. We’re taking it back to the city.” A trickle of perspiration crept down the side of her face, burning cold.

“You can’t do that!” Ngenet straightened away from the hovercraft’s door, towering over her. “I’m a citizen of the Hegemony—”

“And required to obey me.” She lifted her head to glare back at him. “You’re a citizen of Tiamat, by your own choice. If that’s what you want, then you can live like one.”

“How am I supposed to run my plantation?”

“Just like any other Winter. Use a ship, deal with traders. You’ll get along fine, if that’s all you really need it for… Or would you rather take the trip to Carbuncle with us, and have your plantation electronically searched for contraband?” She watched him struggle against speech, and was gratified.

“All right. Take the vehicle. Just let me get my things.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

He looked back at her.

“I’ll drop you off at your plantation before I take the craft to Carbuncle… BZ, you’ll pilot the patroller home.”

Gundhalinu nodded; she saw some of his disappointment shaken loose in the motion. “You want me to tandem you, Inspector?”

“No. I don’t think Citizen Ngenet is going to do anything stupid. He doesn’t strike me as a stupid man.”

Ngenet made a sound that was not really a laugh.

“We might as well get started.” She bent her head grimly at the patrol craft It’s going to be a long trip.

“Yes, ma’am. See you in Carbuncle, Inspector.” Gundhalinu saluted and walked away.

She watched him get into the patrol craft watched it rise from the stone terrace of the quay. The sky was clouding over again; she shivered more violently. At least Carbuncle has central heating… suddenly longing for the touch of a warm wind fragrant with sillipha, the endless summer afternoon of her childhood on Newhaven. “Well, Citizen Ngenet—”

Ngenet reached out, his hand closed gently but firmly over her aching arm. She gasped, stiffening with surprise and sudden alarm.

“Ah,” as he held up his other hand in a cautionary gesture. He let her go. “I just wanted to be sure. The Summer girl hurt you, Inspector. Maybe you better let me see how badly.”

“It’s nothing. Get in.” She looked away from him, jaw tight.

He shrugged. “Feel free to be a martyr if you like. But it doesn’t impress me. As you say, I’m not a stupid man.”

She looked back. “I prefer to wait until I can see a medic at the star port

“I am a qualified medic.” He turned, pressed his hand against a seal on the side of the hovercraft. A storage compartment opened, but in the poor light she could not see what was inside. He removed a dark satchel, set it on the ground and pulled it open. “Of course,” he glanced up with a sardonic smile, “you’d probably consider me to be a vet. But the diagnostic tools are the same.”

She frowned slightly, not understanding, but let him take her hand and run the scanner along her arm.

“Hm.” He released her hand again. “Fractured radius. I’ll splint it temporarily, and give you something for the pain.”

She stood silently while he tightened and sealed the rigid tube of the splint around her arm. He pressed a small, spongy pad into the palm of her ungloved hand; she felt blissful nothingness begin to extinguish the fires up her arm, and sighed. “Thank you.” She watched him put the bag away, wondered suddenly whether he saw her as a gullible female. “You know this isn’t going to change my mind about anything, Ngenet.”

He reseated the compartment, said brusquely. “I didn’t expect it to. I was indirectly responsible for your getting hurt; I don’t like that. Besides” — he faced her again—”I expect I owe you something.”

“What do you mean?”

“For offering me a choice of the lesser of two evils. If that overeager sergeant of yours had his way, I expect I’d end up a deportee.”

She smiled faintly. “Not if you have nothing to hide.”

“Who among us really has nothing to hide, Inspector PalaThion?” He unsealed the hovercraft’s door, watching her with a faint smile of his own. “Do you?”

She circled the craft, waited until he unlatched the far door and settled in carefully. “You’ll be the last to know, Ngenet, either way.” She fastened the straps one-handed.

He said nothing, but went on smiling as he started the power unit. And all at once she was not so certain that he would be the last one.