The Snow Queen

22

“All right, suckers. You’re on your own again.” Tor moved back, hoping for sinuous grace, hoping against hope. Inadvertently revealing more flesh than she had intended to, she bowed her way out of the eerily glowing obstacle course. Hologrammic coin ships and a meteor swarm tangled intangibly in the golden crocheted cap that held her midnight wig under control. The drapery of her silken overalls flashed the blue flame-color of a welding torch; the expanses of skin they left uncovered were a deathly lavender against the darkness.

Whistles and protests followed her in a crowd; she had been gambling with the patrons, as ordered, losing just enough, winning back just enough more to convince them that the games were honestly run. Suckers. The games were honestly run, for the most part-much to her surprise. They were simply so complicated that the ordinary human being couldn’t hope to outwit them. When she thought about the hours and the money she had thrown away, as wantonly and stupidly as any of these drugged-up boobs, she shook her ebony-frizzed head in disgust. Still, it wasn’t so bad now; now that she knew the codes that let her secretly control the outcome of the plays.

No, it wasn’t so bad at all, not any of it: running a casino, taking care of business as the front woman for the Source’s own on-planet interests. She was the Hostess, the titular owner, of Persipone’s Hell, unquestionably the finest gambling hell in Carbuncle. And on the side she tended to whatever other discreet dealings the Source — the head man of the off world criminal subculture on Tiamat — told her to tend to. It was a part of the Queen’s policy to provide capable Winters to act as a screen for off worlder illegalities, so the vice lords themselves could operate with virtual impunity, free of harassment by the Hedge’s police. She had been picked up four times by the Blues as she was working her way into the Source’s favor; but they had had to turn her over to the Queen’s guard, who had simply let her go.

“Hey—” She squinted through the dance of shifting bodies, saw more clearly the off worlder who had just come through the curtain of tiny, shimmering mirrors with a zombie in tow. “Pollux!” She pressed the caller on her bracelet as a secondary summons as she shouted into the throbbing music around her. Pollux appeared at her shoulder with the reassuring solidness of steel. “That pervert who just came in the door; show him out again. We don’t need his business.” She pointed, trying not to see whether the zombie was male or female, or any detail of its form. The very sight sickened her, and the sight of a man or woman who enjoyed using a living body that way.

“Whatever you say, Tor.” Pollux moved away with single-minded inevitability. He made a better bouncer than any of the humans who worked in this place; she had bought out his rental contract for the duration.

It had all worked out so perfectly… funny how it had. Even Herne… She turned back, leaning an elbow on one end of the coal-black, curving bar. The strange light-absorbing material sucked the warmth out through her skin; she shivered and straightened up. Farther down the way Herne sat in command of the banks of automated drink and drug dispensers, an outrageously popular anachronism. Putting him in charge of the bar, where customers gathered to lose their inhibitions along with their good credit, had been her most inspired move. They spilled their guts to each other, and better yet to him; and she fed what he learned to Dawntreader, who still lapped it up like an addict after all these years.

Who would ever have dreamed, that day in Fate’s alley when Dawntreader had nearly strangled her, that his bad temper would lead her to this? But between Herne ’s savvy and Dawntreader’s contacts with somebody up the line, she had risen higher and faster than she had ever dreamed of doing.

“Hey, Persipone, baby, the Source wants you.” Oyarzabal, one of the Source’s lieutenants, was abruptly behind her. His hands settled on her waist, got dangerously personal under the bib of her sensuous evening suit.

She controlled the unsubtle urge to dig an elbow into his ribs. She had learned tact and sophistication of a sort, painfully, since leaving the loading docks; getting mauled came with the territory. “Careful. You’ll set off my burglar alarm.” She pushed his hands away, but not too far. Oyarzabal was a jerk, proven by the fact that he seemed to prefer her to his choice of the easy, chic women who flowed through this place; but she didn’t work too hard at discouraging him. He was a onetime farmboy from somewhere on Big Blue, and attractive in a loutish, overgrown sort of way. She had gone to bed with him a few times, and hadn’t been too disappointed. She’d even toyed with the idea of getting him to marry her before the final departure, and getting off Tiamat for good.

“Hey, sweeting, how about later on you and me—”

“Tonight’s taken.” She started away before he could get his hands on her again; glanced back, relenting a little, enough for a smile. “Ask me tomorrow.”

He grinned. His teeth were inlaid with rhinestones. She turned away again, shaking her head.

She made her way through the crowd, through the forbidden door that led her to the Source’s private suite of offices and guarded meeting rooms — guarded not only by hidden human eyes, but also by the most elaborate anti snoop devices money could buy. When she had learned that Herne was a Kharemoughi, she had asked him about the possibility of using his legendary technical prowess to let her eavesdrop on the Source’s private dealings. But he was no match for the electronic guards, and she had finally realized that all Kharemoughis weren’t born knowing how a turn ore into computer terminals. So she had had to be content with noticing who called on the Source, and when, and only suspecting why.

She didn’t much like being the caller herself. The door to his office opened as she reached it, with the prescience she had learned to expect, and let her in to her audience. She blinked compulsively and slowed as she entered; the room was dark to the point of blindness for her, as it always was. Incense clogged the air with an overwhelming sweetness. She lifted a hand to rub her eyes, stopped it just short of ruining the perfect flowers painted over her lids. She let her hand drop again, resigned, as a dark form began to coalesce against a dimly reddening background: the Source, in silhouette, the only way she had ever seen him.

She had been told by Oyarzabal that the Source had some disease that made his eyes unable to stand the light. She didn’t know whether to believe it, or just to figure that he liked to keep his face hidden. Sometimes, as she adjusted slowly to the dull wash of red from the wall behind him, she thought there might be a distortion about his face. But she could never be sure.

“Persipone.” His voice was a rasping whisper, and again she didn’t know whether it was the real one. He spoke with an accent she couldn’t identify.

“Here, master.” His chosen form of address took on new and sinister meanings here in the blackness. She pushed uneasily at her wig, her scalp itching with sudden tension. He saw perfectly well in the darkness, she knew, and at each visit she was forced to endure his scrutiny.

“Turn around.”

She circled on the deep carpet pile, wondering pointlessly what color it really was, or whether it was simply black.

“Better… yes, I like it better. You’ll never be beautiful, you know; but you’re learning to disguise the fact. You’ve come a long way. I didn’t think you would come such a long way.”

“Yes, master. Thank you, master.” You’re telling me. She didn’t tell him that she had begun to let Pollux pick her clothes for her. His totally impartial judgment topped her own uncertain taste in choosing the styles that made the most of her flawed body; with the wig and the paint she could, as the Source said, disguise her unrelenting plainness.

“But then, how could anyone be compared to the ideal, and not suffer by the comparison… ?” His voice sighed away, he was silent again through seconds that hung on like hours. Once, when she had been allowed a small red-tipped pencil of light to read a list of directions, she had glimpsed a picture-square on the desk, a woman’s face. A woman of striking off world beauty, with a fog of ebony hair netted in gold. And she had understood with abrupt discomfort why she was wearing the same hair, and why her predecessors had worn it too; and why this place was Persipones, and why they all were, too. It had surprised her that a man like the Source might have loved or even hated one woman enough to be obsessed by her; and it gave her the creeps to be window dressing to the obsession. But the rewards had been enough to keep her from saying so.

“How is business tonight?”

“Real good, master. It’s payday over at the star port we’ve got a big crowd.”

“Was the latest deal successful? Have you got sufficient — variety on hand to satisfy certain private customers?”

“Yeah, Coonabarabran was right where you said he’d be, and everything on him. We can handle any pleasure tonight.” She was sure he already knew the answer to the questions, and so she always answered honestly. He did not ask her to handle all his requests — she didn’t mind fronting on drug transactions, because she could keep herself mentally clear of the consequences. The Source oversaw, and dabbled in, numerous other illegal transactions, and there were some she couldn’t stomach. But there was always someone else around who could.

“Good… I’m expecting a particularly important visitor tonight. Make certain the inner meeting room is secure, and prepared appropriately. She will be at the side entrance at midnight. See that she isn’t kept waiting.”

“Yes, master.” She? There were not too many women in the underworld society who rated such solicitude in an audience with the Source.

“That’s all, Persipone. Go back to your guests.”

“Thank you, master,” meekly. The door opened and she escaped, blinking again, into the white glare of the hall beyond. She sighed as the door clicked securely behind her; not offended, as she walked away, that he found her unattractive — only relieved. He was completely off her scale of ambition, and in her private heart she was very much afraid of him, for all the rational reasons — and for all the reasons a child fears the dark.

Arienrhod followed the lurid figure of Persipone through the private passageways to the Source’s inner meeting room. The sounds of the casino reached her distantly through the barrier of separating walls, a deep throbbing that was more vibration than true sound, that reached into her chest like death’s hand. It was more than appropriate she thought, that the heartless merriment of the gaming crowds should show its real nature here in the shadowy halls of the Source’s hidden power. Persipone stopped ahead of her, before a sealed doorway that looked like any other they had passed, and beckoned to her. She moved forward, and Persipone pressed her hand against a panel in the door — the arrival signal, as though they were not already being observed. She nodded to Arienrhod with self-conscious deference, and went away down the hall. Arienrhod was certain that the woman recognized her; wondered what she would think if she realized that Tor Starhiker/Persipone was equally well-known to her Queen as Sparks Dawntreader’s pawn.

But the door was opening before her, opening on darkness, and she put all other thoughts out of her mind. She pushed back the hood of her shadow-colored cloak and walked boldly forward, without waiting to be summoned. But as she crossed over the threshold the door sealed again behind her, sealing her into utter lightlessness. Panic seized her with heavy hands, as it always did. Suddenly it was hard not to believe that she had stepped into another plane, into the merciless unknown of an interstellar vice network — out of the world she knew and controlled. That she was lost… Her mechanical spies peered into every corner of this city, but they could not penetrate this place: It was guarded by even more powerful and sophisticated technology… this all-pervasive darkness that tried to smother her will and swallow her self-control. She stood rigidly still, until the moment passed and she recaptured her perspective. Darkness . it’s a damn good trick. I wish I’d thought of it.

“Your Majesty. You honor my humble establishment.” The Source’s ruined voice (like the voice of a corpse; or was that just an effect, too?) hissed the welcome, oddly accented. “Please take a seat, make yourself comfortable. I would hate to keep the Lady standing.”

Arienrhod noted the intentional play on words, the reference to her barbarian heritage. She made no response, but moved forward confidently to take the deeply cushioned seat across the empty table from him. Ever since their first meeting, where she had been forced to grope humiliatingly through the dark, she had been certain to wear light-enhancing contact lenses when she came to call on him. As her visual purple built up she could actually make out the general form of the room’s contents, and the uncertain outline of the Source himself. Try as she would, she could not fill in the features of his face.

“What is your pleasure, Your Majesty? I have a full store of sensory delights, if you care to indulge.” A broad hand gestured, vaguely misshapen.

“Not tonight.” She gave him no title, refusing to acknowledge the one he demanded of his other clients. “I never combine business with pleasure, unless it’s absolutely necessary.” She felt the heightened intensity of her other senses in the darkened room, and how her crippled sight still struggled to dominate them.

A hoarse chuckle. “Such a pity. Such a waste… don’t you ever wonder what you may be missing?”

“On the contrary,” refusing to be condescended to. “I miss nothing. That’s why I’m the Queen of this world. And that’s why I’m here. I intend to stay Queen of Tiamat after you and the rest of the off world parasites abandon it again. But in order to do that, I’ll need to employ your questionable services on a much bigger scale than I’ve done in the past.”

“You put things so delicately. How could a man refuse you anything?” iron on cement. “What did you have in mind, Your Majesty?”

She rested an elbow on the sense-absorbing chair-arm. Like flesh. It feels like flesh. “I want something to happen during the Festival, something that will create chaos — at the expense of the Summers.”

“You had in mind, perhaps, the sort of accident that befell the former Police Commander? But on a much larger scale, of course.” His voice betrayed no surprise at all; something she found both reassuring and disturbing. “Drugs in the water supply, perhaps.”

But why should it disturb me? It was my idea. “No drugs. That would affect my people too, and I don’t want that. We have to remain in control. I had in mind an epidemic, something most of Winter has been vaccinated against. The Summers would have no protection.”

“I see,” a dim nod. “Yes. It can be arranged. Although I would be betraying the Hegemony in a great way, if I gave you the means of retaining power. It’s very much in our interest to leave the savages in control when we depart.”

“The Hegemony’s best interests are hardly yours. You’re no more a loyalist than I am.” The smell of incense in the air was too strong, as though it were hiding something.

“Our interests coincide in the matter of the water of life.” She heard his smile.

“Name your price, then. I don’t have time to wade in the shallows.” Sharpening her own voice, she jabbed at his smug formless ness

“I want the take from three Hunts. All of it.”

“Three!” She laughed once, not admitting that it was no more than shed expected him to ask for.

“What is the price of a queen’s ransom, Your Majesty?” The darkness around them settled into his voice almost tangibly; she was aware again of how much more she heard, trying to compensate for not seeing his face. “I’m sure the police would be more than interested to learn what you have in mind for this world. Genocide is a serious charge — and against your own people. But that’s what comes of letting a woman rule… Women don’t rule the Hegemony, you know. There are many places, on many worlds, where even your arrogance could be broken, Arienrhod.”

Arienrhod’s hands tightened at the unexpected eagerness of his hatred, a terrifying crack of white-hot damnation between the shielding curtains of the darkness. She became aware of a peculiar odor underlying the perfume of incense in the air… an odor of disease, or decay. But he doesn’t dare! “Don’t threaten me, Thanin Jaakola. You may have been a slave master on Big Blue, and you may be responsible for the majority of the misery on seven different worlds,” letting his comprehension of her own private knowledge harden. “But until the Change this is my world, Jaakola, and you exist here only because I permit you to. Whatever becomes of me becomes of you, because if anything happens to me you lose your protection from the law. I’m sure there are many places that you would find a humbling experience yourself.” And I’m sure you never forget that For a moment. “What I’m asking of you is risky, yes, but simple. I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle easily, given your resources. I’ll give you the entire take of Starbuck’s final Hunt… and that is worth a Queen’s ransom, to you or anyone.”

The darkness magnified his separate breaths, and his silence.

Arienrhod held her own. At last she detected the faint inclination of his head, and he said, “Yes. I’ll handle the matter, for the agreed payment. I’ll enjoy thinking of you ruling Tiamat after we’re gone, without the water of life to keep you young. Ruling in Carbuncle after we’re gone… it won’t be the same place without us, you know. It really won’t be the same.” His laughter tore like rubber.

Arienrhod stood up without further comment, and only after her back was to him and she was crossing the room to the door did she allow herself to frown.

“Where the hell are you going?”

Tor started guility as the voice caught her from behind in the corridor — Herne ’s voice; she was just past the room she had arranged for him to use here in the casino. Most of the other rooms along this corridor were used by prostitutes and their clients. But a new day was dawning somewhere in the outer world, and the hall was empty; the casino was closed for a brief span of rest and recovery.

Tor turned back with deliberate slowness to study Herne . He leaned heavily against the door frame, his useless legs wrapped in the clumsy, powered exoskeleton that let him get around on his own after a fashion. A short, slashed robe thrown on carelessly over his head left him just short of indecent. She frowned. “I’ve got a heavy date. What’s it to you, grandmother?”

“Dressed like that?”

She glanced down at her coveralls; saw her face in the mirror of memory stripped of its painted persona — her own dreary, genuine self, tired of pretending to be someone she was not, glad just to see her own lank and mousy hair emerge from underneath the gold capped wig. “Why not?”

“Only you would ask a question like that.” He sneered his disgust, tugged at his robe. His eyes were bloodshot, his face heavy with fatigue, or drugs, or both.

“If I dressed to turn you on I wouldn’t get much return on the investment.” She watched his mouth thin; satisfied. Time had not made her like him. And it never will. She was bound for a meeting with Sparks Dawntreader, not a rendezvous with a lover; time had made her like him even less than Herne . It was hard to remember that he had ever been the frightened Summer kid shed found cowering in an alley. She had changed outwardly since that day, until sometimes she hardly recognized her own face; but she knew that when she threw off the trappings, she would always find herself. But she had watched the inner thing that had made Sparks Dawntreader himself slowly suffocated by something inhuman… “What are you standing around the hall like a hooker for, anyway, for gods’ sakes? You spy for me, not on me, remember? Sober up and get some sleep; how do you expect to do your job if you stay up all day?” She wished that she were safely asleep in her elegant rooms upstairs, and not starting out for a thankless confrontation at dawn.

“I can’t sleep.” He bent his head, rubbed his face on his arm against the doorjamb. “I can’t even sleep any more; it’s all a stinking—” He broke off, looked up at her abruptly, looking for something he didn’t find. His face hardened over again. “Get off my back!”

“Lay off the drugs, then.” She started on down the hall.

“What was she doing here last night?” His voice caught at her.

Tor stopped again, recognizing the emphasis, his recognition of the Source’s midnight caller who had passed this way, too. Arienrhod, the Snow Queen. The Queen had been muffled in a heavy cloak, like her bodyguard; but Tor was a Winter, and she knew her Queen. It surprised her that Herne would know her, too, or care what she was doing here. “She was here to see the Source. Your guess about what they were doing is as good as mine.”

He laughed unpleasantly. “I can guess what they weren’t doing.” He glanced away down the hall, back in the other direction. “It’s getting close to the final Festival; close to the end of everything, for Arienrhod. Maybe she’s not ready to give it all up to the Summers, after all.” He smiled, an iron smile, full of pointless amusement.

Tor stood still as the idea struck her that the Change was not an inevitability. “She has to. That’s the way it’s always been; otherwise there might be a — a war or something. We’ve always accepted that. When the Summers come…”

He made a derisive noise. “People like you accept the Change! People like Arienrhod make their own changes: Would you give up everything, after being Queen for one hundred and fifty years? If you could get hold of official records, I’ll lay odds you’d see every Snow Queen before her tried to keep Winter here forever. And they all failed.” The smile came back. “All of them.”

I “What do you know about it, foreigner?” Tor waved a hand, brushing oS the idea. “It’s not your world. She’s not your Queen.”

“It is now.” He looked up, but there was only ceiling above them. He turned away, dragging his legs inside their steel cages, turning his back on her. “And Arienrhod will be Queen of my world forever.”