The Snow Queen

27

Moon looked past the back of Elsevier’s heavily padded seat, straining against the arm of her own seat to see out of the LB’s shielded window. Tiamat lay in their view like a rising moon, but infinitely more beautiful to her inner eye. Home — she was coming home, and it was hard not to believe that time had turned itself inside out: that she would find everything as it had been, even as it should have been, when that circle of cloud-limned blue below her expanded and filled once more with the endless sea. But even if it was not the world she had lost, she knew now that she would find the way… she would find the way to change it back,

“Shields green?”

“Ya.”

She listened to Elsevier’s murmured queries, Silky’s monosyllabic responses, the comforting rhythm of a ritual repeated countless times before. Their entry into Tiamat’s atmosphere was neither as painful nor as terrifying as their leaving of it; that outward journey seemed now as though it had happened to someone else. She listened with only half her mind, the other half roaming from past to future, sidestepping the uncertainty of their perilous present. Nothing could go wrong now, nothing would. She had passed through the Black Gate; she was meant to do this.

But Elsevier had radioed an incredulous Ngenet before they broke orbit, only to learn that he could no longer meet them at Shotover Bay; that he had lost his hovercraft five years ago, after their last abortive landing. This time they must take the greater risk of approaching his own plantation on the coast south of Carbuncle; there was no one else to whom Elsevier would trust their final landing.

Elsevier had been — fading, it was the only word Moon could put to the subtle metamorphosis she had witnessed since they had come through the Gate. She had tried to learn what was wrong, but Elsevier had refused to answer; and without any lessening of tenderness, withdrawn into herself and closed Moon out.

Moon was hurt and puzzled, until the time when the Twins began to dominate the ship’s viewscreens. And then she saw at last that this was what Elsevier had been looking toward, preparing for: The end that would come with Moon’s fresh beginning. The final parting from the life she had known, the final parting from the ship that held half a lifetime’s bittersweet memories. The final parting from the surrogate daughter who could have given her a new life to replace the one she was leaving behind, but who instead had only given her a deeper loss to endure.

A vast pseudo-sea of boundless cloud was blanketing their view of the sea now, as they dropped lower and lower, plummeting through the sapphire upper air. Soon… soon they would break the cloud surface, soon she would see their destination, the long unbroken line of the western continental coast where Ngenet’s plantation lay — and Carbuncle.

“…Ratio is up one and a — Silky! We’re in the spotlight! Shift power to rear shields, there’s lightning com—”

A blaze of blue-white light put out the sky ahead, sent daggers into Moon’s eyes; the metal pod shuddered around herA jarring her teeth. No, no; it can’t be!

“Oh, gods!” Elsevier cried out, in something that was closer to anger than despair. “They’ve tracked us down! We’re locked in, we’ll never get—”

Another explosion burst around them… a stretch of silence followed. It was broken as the radio abruptly came to life on its own. “…Surrender now or be destroyed. We have you in our beam. You will not escape.”

“Losing—” The third explosion tore away the name of what had been lost, and Moon’s own questioning cry. The fourth gave them no more time; the instrument panel sparked and shrilled abuse, overloading their dazzled senses…

“Cutting power!” She heard Elsevier’s voice break; the words barely penetrated her ringing ears. “…only hope… think we’re j already dead—” The cabin went black with the suddenness of death, :] but Moon’s blinking eyes recaptured the light of the outer air; saw the limitless blue, white, and golden fantasy fields of heaven obliterate as they broke into the surface of the clouds. She clung to the edge of her seat, counting every beat of her heart; realizing with each reaffirmation of her own life that there had not been another explosion yet — the one that, utterly defenseless now, they would never even see.

They fell out of the clouds again, as abruptly as they had fallen into them. She saw the sea at last, rolling beneath them, an ocean of molten pewter. Raindrops spattered and blurred across the wide window, smearing the view of sea and sky like tears. And they were still alive. The LB dropped through a flattening arc, like a sling stone skimming an infinite pond. Elsevier and Silky worked in silence at the controls. Moon kept silence with them, her voice cowering in her throat, making the only contribution she could.

“Now, Silky; emergency systems on—”

The smoke-gray cone above Moon’s seat dropped unexpectedly over her, cutting off Elsevier’s voice beginning a distress call, and her last view of the rising sea surface, ice-white and iron-gray. She was immobilized against her seat by a cushion of expanding air, lay unresisting — unable to resist — as her helplessness became total. After an eternity of anticipation, the coming together of metal sphere and iron-gray sea rang dimly through her, like a blow falling on someone else, in astounding anticlimax.

And after another brief eternity the cushion shrivelled away from her, the smoky pod lifted. She threw off the restraining straps and pulled herself forward out of her seat to stand between the pilots’ couches. The gray shield was still rising above Silky’s seat; he shook his head in a very human gesture of befuddlement. Before her the sea butted against the port with furious indignation; droplets of icy water seeped through the shatter-frost that impact had etched over the reinforced transparent wall. The very structure of the LB heaved under her feet, and the crash of the angry water was loud around them.

The hood hung firmly in place above Elsevier’s seat; as though it had never-Moon looked down suddenly at Elsevier’s face, afraid to see, unable to look away.

A track of red traced the ebony of Elsevier’s upper lip, but she looked up, resting her head against the seat back. “It’s nothing, my dear… only a nosebleed… I had to finish my message. Ngenet’s coming.” She shut her eyes, gasping shallowly, as though gravity’s heavy hand still crushed her… had already crushed her. She sat motionless, making no effort even to raise a finger; like a woman who had all the time in the world.

Moon swallowed, choking on a smile, touched her shoulder with frightened tenderness. “We’re down, Elsie. You saved us. Everything’s all right now! It’s over.”

“Yes.” A strange surprise filled the violet-blue eyes; Elsevier looked out in astonishment at something beyond their view. “I’m so cold.” A spasm worked the muscles of her face.

And as suddenly the eyes were empty.

“Elsie. Elsie?” Moon’s hand tightened over her shoulder, shook her… released her, when there was no response. “Silky—” half turning, not willing to turn away, “she’s not… Elsie!” pleading.

Silky shouldered her aside in the cramped space between the seats. He reached out with the cold snake-fingers of his gray-green arm to touch the warm flesh of Elsevier’s face, her throat… But she did not flinch under his touch, only went on gazing at something beyond view, until the flat strips of gray passed over her eyes, closing them forever. “Dead.”

The LB heaved and settled, throwing them off-balance; Moon looked down distraughtly as her feet did not respond. Water lapped the legs of her pressure suit, sea water, rolling into the cabin. “Dead?” She shook her head. “No, she’s not. She isn’t dead. Elsie.

Elsie, we’re flooding! Wake up!” shaking the limp, un responding body. Tentacles wrapped her arms, jerked her away unceremoniously.

“Dead!” Silky’s eyes were the clearest, the deepest she had ever seen them. He pressed a sequence of buttons on the panel, repeated it. “Hatch sprung. Sink. Out, go—” He shoved her toward the lock; she staggered as a new, knee-deep surge met her halfway in the aisle.

“No! She isn’t dead. She can’t be!” furiously. “We can’t leave her now.” Moon clung to a seat back.

“Go!” Silky struck at her, driving her away, back toward the lock. She stumbled and fell, another surge covered her and brought her up gasping with salt fire burning her eyes. She struggled on to the lock entrance, caught hold of the doorway, turning to look back once more: to see Silky kneel in the swirling water by Elsevier’s side and bow his head, rest it briefly against her shoulder in tribute and farewell.

He climbed to his feet again, waded down the aisle to Moon’s side. “Out!” The tentacles wrapped her arm again as he dragged her on into the lock.

She let go of the door frame, unable to resist, and plunged after him. She saw the hatchway agape, swallowing the sea, like a helpless dr owner… “My helmet! I’ll drown—” She turned back to the inner cabin, but the waist-deep surge wrapped its own arms around her, dragged her off her feet. Icy water doused her again; she struggled upright, half swimming, gasping as the frigid runoff sluiced in around the neck of her suit. The LB tilted with the heaving of the sea swells, canted the floodwaters back toward the hatch, sweeping her with them. She slammed into the edge of the hatch opening, cracking her head on the metal, before the LB spewed them both out into the open ocean.

Moon’s cry extinguished like a flame as the sea closed over her head. She kicked her way to the surface, broke out into the air, where wind-driven sleeting rain beat her back against the water surface. Fingers of blinding hot and cold mauled her inside her clumsy suit. “Silky!” She screamed his name, and it was torn away by the wind, as lost and desolate as a mer’s cry.

But then as suddenly, Silky’s spume-splashed face and torso were beside her; supporting her as she fought to keep herself afloat, dragged down by the waterlogged pressure suit. He had shed his own suit, swimming freely, in his element. She felt him jerk at the seals of her suit front, trying to strip it from her.

“No!” She clawed at his slippery tentacles, but they escaped her like eels. “No, I’ll freeze!” Her struggles drove her under, she came up again gagging and spitting. “I can’t live in this — without it!” knowing that she would not survive anyway, because the suit was filling with liquid ballast to drag her down. She understood at last, in the way that would only come to anyone once in a lifetime, the full and poignant irony of the Sailor’s Choice: to freeze, or to drown.

Silky left her suit alone, only trying now to help her stay afloat. Already the first shocking agony of cold had blurred to a bone-deep ache that sapped her of strength and judgment. In the distance between the shifting molten mountains, for a moment she glimpsed the foundering LB — and then nothing where it had been but the flowing together of sea and sky. Elsevier. A sacrifice to the Sea… Moon felt the salt water of her own grief mingle with the sea’s and the sky’s.

And after an uncertain length of time she realized that the squall was passing: The sky dried its tears and lost its anger, the swollen wrath left the sea’s face, exhaustion dried her own tears as a wan, ice-splintered sun blinked down at her through the opening clouds. Silky still held her firmly from behind, helping her stay afloat; her body was convulsed with uncontrollable shivering. Sometimes she thought she could see the shoreline, unreachably far away, never sure it was more than a phantom of the mists or of her mind. She had no strength left to speak, and Silky spoke only with the wordless reassurance of his presence. She felt his alien ness more vividly than she ever had, and the knowledge that it made no difference…

She should tell him to let her go, save his strength, there was no hope that Ngenet would ever find them in time. It would still come to the same thing in the end. But she couldn’t form the words, and knew in her heart that she didn’t want to. To die alone… to die to sleep here forever. She thought she could feel the marrow congealing in her bones. She was so tired, so achingly weary; and sleep would come, rocked in the Sea Mother’s inexorable cradle. The Lady was both creator and destroyer, and with dim despair she knew that the single lives of woman or man were no more important in Her greater pattern than the life of the tiniest crustacean creeping through the bottom mud…

Something broke the water’s surface in front of them, sending cold spray into Moon’s face. She groaned as Silky’s arms tightened around her chest, squinted with ice-lashed eyes at a shining brindle face gazing back at her. Two, then three more inhuman faces surfaced, behind and beside the first, to lie like fishing balls on the brightening water. Recognition rose slowly, like a bubble rising out of the depths, penetrating her anesthetic stupor: mers…

They closed in around her, prodding her insistently, urgently, with their webbed fore-flippers. Her mind could not form an image of what they wanted from her; but she knew, with the unquestioning trust of her childhood, that they were the Lady’s own children come to save her if they could. “S-Silky,” chewing the words to pieces between her chattering teeth, “let me — g-go.”

He released her; she sank like a stone beneath the surface. But before she could react, the sleek, buoyant shapes were raising her again. Web-fingered flippers enfolded her like the petals of a closing flower, drawing her up into the air — over onto her stomach on the soft, broad breast of a mer at rest in the water. She lay sputtering and amazed, held barely clear of the lapping surface of the sea, her feet still trailing in its insatiable cold. But the mer — it was a female, she could tell by the necklace of golden fur it wore — wrapped her in its flippers like a nurse ling cub, feeding her its body heat as it would warm and feed its own young one. It began a deep toneless crooning, in rhythm with the rocking of the sea. Too exhausted to wonder, Moon lay her head on its silky breast, hands beneath her, feeling the toneless song penetrate her shuddering body. Silky and two of the other mers still hovered nearby; but she did not remember them now, did not remember anything past or future as her existence telescoped down to the present moment.

How long in the time of the greater world she drifted, held in the mer’s embrace, she never knew, or wanted to know. The sun had crossed the sky, rolling down the farther slope to its own rendezvous with the sea, before another change came over the face of the water: the long shadow of a ship reaching ahead to greet them, the distant heartbeat of its engines breaking their silence more and more insistently.

“Moon. Moon. Moon.” Silky spoke her name, wreathing her neck with dripping tentacles as he tried to make her hear.

But there was no Moon, no moon above, only the sea, the Sea, to answer him… the Sea reclaiming Her own.

“Moon… can you hear me?”

“No—” It was more a protest against the intrusion on her mindless peace than an answer to a demand. The world was a watercolor painting formlessly flowing…

Something jarred her lip against her chattering teeth; hot, viscous liquid spilled into her mouth and trickled down her throat like flaming oil. She whimpered in pleasure and denial, feeling the watercolor world congeal, take on a form that was without reference in her grayed memory — except for the face centering above her, pulling past and present into a single double-image. “MM-Miroe?”

“Yes,” with infinite relief. “She’s coming back to us, Silky. She knows me.” Beyond him she made out Silky crouched patiently, watching, and the round unblinking eye of a cabin porthole.

“W-where?” She gulped the peppery-sweet syrup convulsively as Ngenet pressed the cup to her lips again. Her shivering, shriveled body was bare of the waterlogged suit and bundled in heated blankets.

“On my ship. Hauled in safe on board at last, thank the gods. We’re going home.” He replaced a hot compress across the bridge of her nose, over her cheeks.

“H-home… ?” Past and present lives ran together again.

“To my plantation, to safe harbor. You’ve spent enough time walking the star road, and enough time in the arms of the Sea Mother, mer-child… almost a lifetime.” He brushed her sodden hair back from her forehead with a calloused, gentle hand. “Time to be grateful for solid ground, now.”

“El-Elsie…” The word hurt her throat like bile.

“I know.” Ngenet straightened up from the edge of the bunk. “I know. There’s nothing you can do for her now but rest, and heal.” His voice and the cabin space faded into the unreachable distance.

Moon huddled deeper inside the nest of blankets as her awareness shrank inward, dwindled down to the sensation of hot needles penetrating her cold-deadened flesh, turning ice-locked veins to spring, unbinding her muscles; setting her free…