The Snow Queen

26

“Got warm bodies registering down there someplace, Inspector.” The pilot, TierPardee, roused from his usual truculent silence with rare animation. “Looks right for humans. Along that rift to the left; there’s bush for cover.”

“Using any power?” Gundhalinu stuck the Old Empire novel into a pocket of his heavy coat, leaned forward in his seat, the patrol craft shoulder harness pressing the side of his throat. At last, some action… He peered out through the windshield, scanning with inadequate human eyes for a trace of what their all-seeing equipment saw. They had been tracking this party of thieves for a day and a half after the raid on the star port The trail had been muddled at the start, but it had been steadily getting fresher. The list of things missing included a crate containing a portable heavy-duty beamer that belonged to the police; he wondered how in hell they had managed to get access to that. The nomads were not usually well armed, which was why their raids depended on stealth and avoided confrontation. But they were as pitiless and unsubtle as the stark black-and-white land that sheltered them, and they had killed almost casually the handful of off worlders who had gotten in their way. He meant to make sure this acquisition didn’t change their method of operation.

He glanced down at the readout on the panel again, to make his own assessment, as TierPardee sang out, “Yes, sir! We’ve finally nailed ‘em, Inspector, they’ve got snow skimmers down there.” TierPardee laughed gleefully. “I’ll take us in low and scare the piss out of them; ought to be no trouble picking the Mother lovers off after that, right, sir?”

Gundhalinu opened his mouth to make a skeptical response just as his eyes found the next readout, just as it suddenly glared red-red warning—”Get us the hell out of here now!”

He reached across TierPardee’s amazed and sluggish body, jerked the control bar back and around into a steeply climbing turn. He felt the bar tremble and fight his control. “Come on…”

“Inspector, what the—” TierPardee never finished it, as the hidden bolt of directed energy caught them from below and punched them out of the sky.

Gundhalinu had a brief, whorled image of black-white-blue photo printed indelibly on his brain; giddy free fall spun him like a lottery wheel before the craft’s stabilizers reintegrated and stopped their nightmare tumbling. But not their fall — they were dead in the air, dropping down like a stone through a soundless dive that would end with them dead on the ground. His hand stretched instinctively to press the restart button; he pushed it again and again, his numbed brain acknowledging at last the reason why there was no response: the beamer had slagged the shielding on the power unit, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing — TierPardee sat gaping like a plastic dummy, making a sound that at first he mistook for laughter. The sky disappeared, he saw the rumpled cloud-surface of the snow and the jutting black fangs of the naked cliff leap up to meet them…

They hit the snow before they hit the cliff, and that was all that saved them. The snow plowed up in a cushion of blinding white, absorbing the impact that still threw him forward so hard his helmet warped the pliant windshield.

For a long time he lay without moving, doubled over in the embrace of the harness; listening to bells, unable to focus his eyes or even make a sound. Knowing that there was something important he must say, must warn — but it wouldn’t take form in his mouth or even his mind. The cabin felt hot to him, which struck him as strange because they were buried in snow. Buried. Buried. Dead and . ? He shut his eyes. Something stank. His eyes hurt… The air. The air was going bad, smelled like buried — like burning.

His eyes watered; he opened them again. Burning insulation. That was it. The avalanche of snow was slushing, slipping down outside the windows. ““Pardee. Overload. Gedoud.” The words ware unintelligible even to him. He shook TierPardee, but the patrolman’s eyes stayed shut, and he hung forward across the straps unmoving. Gundhalinu struggled with his own harness latch, finally set himself free. He tried the door; it was still blocked shut by snow. He beat against it with his fist, uselessly, while every blow fed back through his bones into his throbbing head. At last he wedged himself sideways and shoved with his feet, threw all his returning strength and his fear into it. The door began to give, a centimeter at a time, until at last it sprang upward on its own, half dumping him out into the snow.

He landed on his knees in a puddle of slush, shocked by the sudden assault on his aching body of painful heat and cold. He pulled himself up the side of the craft, forcing his rubber legs to lock and support him, separating the sinister heat of the power unit going critical from the icy embrace of the wind. He had to get TierPardee out and as far away as he could before the patroller turned into a star.

He leaned into the cabin; but something caught his collar, jerked him away and back into the snow again. Not bells, this time, but the ugly music of human laughter echoing off the cliff face; ugly, because he knew it was directed at him. He rolled over, pushed up onto his knees to face his tormenters — saw with no surprise at all the white parkas and leggings, half a dozen pale, amorphous faces half obscured by slitted wooden goggles, like the bulging eyes of a family of insectoids. But these were human, all right — nomadic Winter pfalla herders turned thieves by opportunity, who had shed their bright, traditional clothing for the antiseptic camouflage of arctic commandos. A blow on the back ended his assessment as he sprawled forward into the snow; he felt someone roll him onto his side and deftly disarm him. There was a whoop of triumph as the bearded male held his stunner up like a prize.

Gundhalinu sat up, wiping snow from his face, forgetting the indignity of his position in the urgency of his need. “That’s going to blow—!” He pointed, not sure how much they would understand. “Help me get him out of there; there’s not much time!” He climbed to his feet, relieved at the murmur of consternation that ran through the group. He started back toward the patrol craft but another of the nomads had gotten there first, and straightened holding TierPardee’s gun, grinning satisfaction. “He’s good for nothing, that one — this’s all I found. It’s too hot in there; forget about it.” The roving muzzle of the stunner suddenly targeted Gundhalinu’s chest. “Zap, you’re paralyzed, Blue!” A high-pitched adolescent giggle escaped from the muffled figure.

Gundhalinu stopped, looking past the teenager and the filamented muzzle of the gun. “He’s not dead, he’s hurt! He’s alive; we’ve got to get him out of there—” His breath rose up white in his face.

But the man who had taken his own gun and another man caught him by the arms at a sharp command. They began to drag him back away from the craft. The teenager strutted behind him, on snowshoes like the rest, giggling again as his boots broke through the snow crust and he floundered.

“No! You can’t do this; he’s alive, damn you, he’ll be burned alive in there!”

“Then be glad you’re only watching, and not joining him.” The first man grinned at his side. They forced him to go with them as far as the outcropping of fallen rock where they had hidden their snow skimmers. They all stopped then, and turned back, crouching down to watch. The two men still held his arms locked between them, forcing him to keep his feet as they made him turn with the rest. He could see the distant patrol craft melted clear of snow now, and a dull glow spreading over its crumpled frame. He looked up into the sky, filling his eyes with the blue of heaven, and prayed to the gods of eight separate worlds that TierPardee would never know what was happening to him now.

But the sky was empty, and in the empty white silence of the frozen Winter world a sun ball of searing light burned his sight away and the blast that followed obliterated all his other senses.

Consciousness followed pain back into his aching body; he lay propped against a boulder while the nomads shuffled and muttered and pointed past him in subdued awe. One of them laughed nervously. Memory came back to him and he remembered why they were laughing… he leaned over and vomited into the trampled snow.

“They send you to kill us, and you can’t even stomach the sight of death!” One of the nomads stood over him and spat. The spittle landed on the heavy cloth of his uniform coat; he watched it begin to freeze. He looked up, aware of how the cold air burned as his lungs sucked it in, aware of the fact that he had just been spat upon by a barbarian, by an old hag with a face like fishnet, who wasn’t fit to touch the lowest Unclassified on Kharemough.

He pulled himself up the rock, clumsy with stiffness and cold, until he could stand looking down at her. He said, his voice brittle with fury, “You are all under arrest, for murder and robbery. You will return with me to the star port to face charges.” Hearing the words, he could not quite believe that he had really said them.

The old woman stared at him incredulously, burst into obscene, frost-clouded laughter, wrapping her arms around her. The rest of the bandits began to close in around him, having lost interest in their first victim now that he no longer existed. “You hear him?” She poked an arthritic claw at his face delightedly. “You hear what this sniveling foreigner with the dirty skin says to us? That he thinks we’re under arrest! What do you think of that?” She swept her hand away again.

“I think he must be crazy.” One of the men grinned; Gundhalinu thought that there were three men and one other woman… guessed that the adolescent was female, too, but he wasn’t sure. This damned world turned civilized behavior upside down until he couldn’t judge anything by standards he knew.

But there was one thing he understood clearly enough — that he was not going to get out of his alive. They were going to kill him next. The realization made him dizzy; he pressed back against the rock for support. He watched them push up their goggles to get a better look at him, and saw no mercy in the pale-ringed, sky-colored eyes. One of them fingered the sleeve of his coat; he jerked his arm away.

“What’re we going to do with this one, huh?” The teenager elbowed one of the men aside for a better look. “Can I have him? Oh, let me have him, Ma!” The stunner pointed him out again. He realized she was speaking to the old woman. “For my collection.”

He had a sudden vision of his own mutilated head jammed on a stake, like a piece of meat in some grisly charnel-house freezer. His stomach knotted again; he pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Gods!… oh, gods, not like that. If I have to die let it be clean… let it be quick.

“Shut up, brat,” the crone said sharply. The girl made a face behind her back.

“I say kill him now, shaman,” the other woman said. “Kill him ugly. Then the other foreigners will be afraid to come out here any more.”

“If you kill me they’ll never stop coming after you!” Gundhalinu took a step forward, saw two knives come out of hidden sheaths. “You can’t murder a police inspector and get away with it. They’ll never stop until they find you.” He knew he was saying it only to comfort himself, because it wasn’t true. He felt the lameness of the lying words, knew that the others felt it, too. He began to shiver.

“And who’s ever going to know what happened?” The old crone grinned again; her teeth were flawless, as white as the snow. He wondered, absurdly, whether they were false. “We could throw your corpse down a crack and the ice would grind up your bones. Not even all your gods will ever find where you lie!” Abruptly she brought up the thing hanging at her back and jammed it into his chest, driving him back against the boulders with a grunt of surprise. “You think you can hunt us down on our own land, foreigner? I’m the Mother. The earth is my lover, the rocks and the birds and the animals are my children. They speak to me, I know their language.” The opacity of madness made porcelain of her eyes. “They tell me how to hunt a hunter. And they want an offering, they want a reward.”

Gundhalinu looked down at the long, bright metal tube that pinned him against the icy rock, recognized a police-issue electron torch before his eyes blurred out of focus again. He stood up with rigid dignity, controlling his physical responses by an effort of will, as the old hag backed slowly away. The others moved with her, out of range of the energy backwash; leaving him alone in a circle of eddied snow. His mouth hurt, his lungs ached from the frigid air. Every breath now might be his last, but in his mind he saw no playback of life scenes, no profound revelation of universal truth in his final moment nothing; there was nothing at all…

The old woman raised the torch, and pressed the trigger.

Gundhalinu swayed with the shock of the blow that did not fall; opened eyes that he didn’t remember closing, in time to see the woman press the trigger again and again, with no result. She muttered furiously, shaking it; curses of frustration circled the fence of leering witnesses.

He moved forward unsteadily, holding out his hands. “Here — let me fix that for you.”

Amazement came back into the washed-out blue eyes; she jerked the torch out of his reach.

He stood patiently with his hands extended, palm up. “It’s jammed. Happens all the time. I can fix it, if you’ll let me.”

She frowned, but her expression shifted subtly again, and she made a small gesture with her head. He was aware of two stunners directed at him now, aware that he would never get away with an escape attempt. She thrust the torch into his hands. “Fix it then, if you’re so eager to die.” The tone suggested that she thought he had lost his mind; he wondered if he had.

He kneeled down, sinking back, feeling the bite of the snow as it soaked through the cloth of his pants leg. He balanced the torch across his thigh, pulled off his gloves and unsnapped the tool pouch he wore at his belt. He withdrew a hair-fine magnetized rod and inserted it into the opening at the base of the torch handle, began to probe the hidden mechanisms with gentle confidence. His sweating hands stuck to the frozen metal as he worked; he scarcely noticed. Feeling his way along unseen paths, he came at last to the crucial crossroads and separated the two components that had locked together. He withdrew the probe again carefully, grateful that the problem was only what he had expected. He put the probe away in its place, wondering why he bothered, and held the torch out to the old woman. He met her eyes without expression. “That ought to do it. You shouldn’t steal our toys unless you know how to take care of them.”

She jerked the torch out of his hands, taking a layer of epidermis with it. He grimaced, but his hands were like wood, senseless, useless already. Like his face; like his brain. He got up, letting his gloves drop at his feet. At least he had proven his superiority over these savages, at least now he could die cleanly, with honor, executed by a superior weapon.

But she did not aim the torch at him this time. Instead she turned, bracing it against her, and took aim at the stand of evergreen shrubs below the cliff wall. She fired; he heard the electric crackle of the beam and a small explosion as a solitary tree-shrub burst into flame. Shouts of approval rose around him, and the eagerness for death came back into the wild, pitiless faces.

The crone shuffled around toward him with the torch. “You did a good job, foreigner,” smiling without any humanity.

He watched the blazing tree from the corner of his eye. The smoke collected against the cliff wall; the smell of the burning wood was pungently alien. But burned human flesh smelled like any other seared meat… “I’m a Kharemoughi. I can repair any piece of equipment made, blindfolded. That’s what makes us more than just animals.”

“But you’ll die like any of us, foreigner! Do you really want to die?”

“I’m ready to die.” He stood straighter; his whole body seemed to belong to someone else now.

She raised the torch, her arms trembling faintly with the effort of supporting it. Her hand closed over the trigger and her eyes probed his face, wanting him to break down and beg for his life. But he would die before he gave them that satisfaction… and he knew that he would die anyway.

“Kill him. Kill him!” The voices began to rise with the watchers’ impatience. He glanced distractedly at the ring of faces, saw on the teenager’s face an expression he couldn’t name.

“No.” The old woman let the tube drop, grinning with hideous spite. “No, we won’t kill him; we’ll keep him. He can repair the equipment we steal from his people at the star port

“He’s dangerous, shaman!” one of the men said, angry with frustration. “We don’t need him.”

“I say he lives!” the hag snarled. “He wants to die — look at him! A man who’s not afraid to die is crazy, and it’s bad luck to kill a crazy man.” She still grinned at him, with self-aware mockery.

Gundhalinu felt his fatalistic stupor clear as he finally understood: They were not going to give him a clean death. They were going to make him their slave… “No, you filthy animals!” He threw himself at the old woman, at the torch. “Kill me, damn you! I won’t—”

She brought the tube of the torch up instinctively and hit him in the face with it. Gundhalinu fell back into a snowdrift, blood burning on his skin, pain rattling in his head like a scream. He spat a mouthful of blood and a tooth into the snow, sat moaning behind his frozen hands as the nomads began to drift away from him. He heard the old woman giving orders, but not what she said; not caring, not caring about anything.

“Here… put on your gloves, stupid.” The teenager stood over him; waved them in his face. He pulled back, tried to ignore her as he scooped up a handful of snow and packed it into his torn mouth.

“Blue!” This time it was TierPardee’s stunner shoved into his face. “Blue-boy, you better listen to me!” She tossed the gloves onto his stomach.

He pulled them on slowly, over senseless fingers iced with blood. The thought of being stunned helpless, dragged to a sled and dumped aboard like a crate of spare parts was unendurable. He must bear himself with all the dignity he could, until he found a way out of this nightmare… some way, any way.

Something dropped over his helmet, slithered down his face like a snake to settle around his neck. He looked up, startled, and the noose tightened against his throat. The girl laughed at his expression; the other end of the rope wrapped her mittened hand. She let it swing loose, standing arrogantly akimbo in front of him. “Good boy. Ma says she wants your hands. But she says I get the rest of you, for my zoo.” She pushed her goggles down, half hiding her narrow, knobby face. “My pet Blue.” She laughed again, jerked suddenly on the rope. “Come on, Blue! And you better come quick.”

Gundhalinu climbed hastily to his feet, floundered after her through the snow to the waiting skimmers. Knowing that even though they hadn’t killed him he was still a dead man; because in that moment his world had come to an end.