The Snow Queen

31

“Hello, Miroe.” Jerusha climbed out of the patrol craft wearing her uniform and her best imitation smile. The wind clapped its chill hands on her shoulders, tried to jerk her half-sealed coat open for ruder intimacies. Damn this weather! Her smile struggled.

“Jerusha?” Ngenet came striding down the slope from the outbuildings, summoned by field hands who had seen her coming in.

His own widening smile of welcome looked real to her, and hers began to warm. But she read ambivalence in the glance that took in her uniform before it met her eyes. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.” She nodded, an excuse to look down, wondering if time was all that lay behind his hesitation. “I know. How — how’ve you been, Miroe?”

“About the same. Everything’s about the same.” He pushed his hands into his parka pockets, shrugged. “It usually is. Is this official business, or strictly a social call?” He peered past her into the empty patrol craft

“A little of both, I guess,” trying to make it sound casual. She saw his mouth tighten ever so slightly, twitching his mustache. “That is, we had a report on a tech runner downed near here” — fully two or three weeks ago—”and since I was in the area checking it out…”

“The Commander of Police chasing down strays in the outback? Since when?” amused.

“Well, I was the only one they could spare.” She grinned ruefully, stretching the unused muscles in her cheeks.

Laughter. “Damn it, Jerusha, you know you don’t need an official excuse to come by here. You’re welcome any time… as a friend.”

“Thank you.” She understood the qualification and was grateful for it. “It’s nice to be singled out as a human being for a change, and not as a Blue.” She plucked at her coat, suddenly embarrassed by it. My shield, my armor. What will I do when they take it away from me? “I… I tried to call you, a couple of weeks ago. But you were gone.” It occurred to her suddenly to wonder why he hadn’t returned the call. Gods, who could blame him, when I never returned any of his?

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t—” He seemed to reach the same question, without finding an answer either. “You’ve been — busy, I suppose.”

“Busy! Oh, hell and devils, it’s been… sheer hell, and devils.” She leaned against the patrol craft pulled down the door and slammed it. “BZ is gone, Miroe. Dead. Killed by bandits outside the city. And I just can’t… I can’t stand it any more.” Her head bowed in invisible bondage. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand going back to Carbuncle again. When all I can think of is how much better it would be for everyone, how glad everyone would be, if I never came back at all. How much better it would be if I’d been the one who’d been lost.”

“By all the gods, Jerusha — why didn’t you tell me?”

She turned away from his outstretched hand, leaning on the hood, looking desperately out to sea. “I didn’t come here to — to use you for a garbage can, damn it!”

“Of course you did. What are friends for?” She heard his smile.

“I did not!”

“All right. Then why not? Why not?” He pulled at her elbow.

“Don’t touch me. Please, Miroe, don’t.” She felt his hand release her, felt her arm still tingling with the contact. “I can handle it. I’ll be all right, I can handle it alone.” Her control hung by a thread.

“And you feel like dying is the way to do it?”

“No!” She brought her fist down on the cold metal. “No. That’s why I had to get away… I had to find some other way.” She turned back, slowly, but with her eyes shut.

He was silent for a moment, waiting. “Jerusha — I know the kind of screws they’ve been putting to you, all this time. You can’t handle that kind of pressure by holding it all back. You can’t do it alone.” Suddenly almost angry, “Why did you stop calling? Why did you stop — answering? Didn’t you trust me?”

“Too much.” She pressed her mouth together, stopping an absurd giggle. “Oh, gods. I trust you too much! Look at me, I haven’t been here five minutes and already I’ve spilled my guts to you. Just seeing you breaks me down.” She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed. “You see. I can’t lean on you, without becoming a cripple.”

“We’re all cripples, Jerusha. We’re born crippled.”

Slowly she opened her eyes. “Are we?”

He stood with hands locked behind him, looking out toward the , sea. The wind stiffened, whipping his raven-feather hair; she shrank down inside her heavy coat. “You know the answer, or you wouldn’t ] have come. Let’s go up to the house.” He looked back at her; she ] nodded.

She followed him up the hill, making hesitant small talk about crops and weather, letting all her resistance flow out of her and down to the sea. They passed the creaking windmill that stood like a lonely sentinel over the outbuildings. He used it to pump water from his well; it occurred to her again, as it had occurred to her before, ; that it was an absurd anachronism on a plantation that functioned ‘ on imported power units.

“Miroe, I’ve always wondered why you use that thing to power your pump.”

He glanced back at her, away at the windmill, said good-naturedly, “Well, you took away my hovercraft, Jerusha. You can never tell when I might lose my generators.”

It was not the answer she had been expecting, but she only shook her head. They reached the main house, went in through the storm shuttered porch, into the room she still remembered perfectly from the first time; and from the handful of stolen evenings in the years since then that she had spent cross-legged before the fire, wrapped in warmth and golden light, caught up in a game of 3D chama or feeding Miroe’s quiet fascination with her reminiscences about another world.

She pulled off her helmet, shook out her dark curls. She let her eyes wander over the comfortable junk-shop homeliness of the room, where relics of his off worlder ancestors, heirlooms by default, kept uneasy truce with rough-hewn native furniture. Moving to the broad stone hearth she turned to face him, letting her back begin to thaw. “You know, after all this time I feel like I haven’t even been away. Funny, isn’t it, how some places are like that?”

He looked up at her from halfway across the room; didn’t answer, but smiled. “Why don’t you take your things upstairs? I’ll get us something to eat.”

She picked up the shoulder bag she had hah filled with a change of clothing, climbed the worn staircase to the second story. It was a large house… filled with echoes of children and laughter… filled with memories. The banister under her hand was worn smooth by the polishing of countless hands; but the halls, the rooms, were empty and silent now. Only Miroe, the last of his line, alone. Alone even among the Winters who worked for him here. She sensed the bond of trust and respect that seemed to exist between them, a stronger bond than she would have expected between owner and workers, natives and off worlder But there was always an intangible field of reserve surrounding him, keeping him separate, self-contained. She felt it, sometimes, striking sparks against her own.

She entered the room she had always taken, threw her bag and her helmet down on the rumpled bed, watched them sink into the comforters. The wooden-framed bed itself was as hard as a board — was a board, for all she knew — but she had never lam awake here for half the night, praying for sleep while her eyes burned a hole through her lids in the dark…

She unfastened her coat, took it off, started toward the massive wardrobe with it. Stopped, as her gaze landed on the eye-stunning chartreuse flightsuit lying in a heap on the wardrobe’s floor. She hung her coat on a hook mechanically, picked up the jump suit and held it against herself. Held it at arm’s length again, studying the contours. Then, slowly, she took her coat back and hung the flightsuit in its place.

She went back to the bed, looked again at the rumpled covers; picked up the brush lying on a stool at bedside, fingered the strands of long, fair hair. She put it down again. She stood silently, suddenly in her mind seeing a small, solitary, curly-haired child, in threadbare underpants and sandals, who crouched to watch silvery wogs flit in a dying pool. The sunlight poured over her like hot honey, suffocating all sound, and the stone-studded, blistered moraine of the dry riverbed stretched away forever…

Jerusha took back her helmet and her bag from the bed, and went quickly down the stairs.

“Jerusha?” Miroe straightened away from the low planked table near the fire, frowning his lack of comprehension. “I thought you were—”

“You didn’t tell me you had — other guests.” The word took on meanings she hadn’t intended. “I won’t stay.”

His face changed, like the face of a man who had just been caught in a terrible oversight. Her own face seemed to have froZen to death.

He said quietly, “Aren’t you ever off duty?”

“Your morals are no all — concern of mine, even on duty.”

“What?” Another expression entirely. “You mean-Is that what you thought?” His relief burst out in deep laughter. “I thought you were looking for smugglers!”

Her mouth opened.

“Jerusha.” He picked his way across the cluttered room to her. “Ye gods, I didn’t mean it like that. It isn’t what you think; she’s only a friend. Not a romance. She’s young enough to be my daughter. She’s out on a boat right now.”

Jerusha looked away, down, “I didn’t want to — intrude.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m not a plastic effigy, gods know—” He picked up a flabby, faded cushion, put it down.

“I didn’t expect you were.” She knew she was saying it badly.

“I… you said once that I wasn’t a stupid man. But in all this time, all the visits you’ve made here, I never realized…” his hand rose to touch her in a way he had never touched her, “…that you wanted something more.”

“I didn’t want you to.” Didn’t want to admit it, even to myself. She tried to move, tried to step away from his hand, tried, tried-trembling like a wild bird.

He took his hand away. “Is there someone else? In the city, back on your world, another—”

“No,” her face burning. “Never.”

“Never?” He held a long breath. “Never?… No one has ever touched you like this—” along the nape of her neck, her earlobe, the line of her jaw “—or like this—” tracing the seal of her tunic down over her breast “—or done this—” slowly surrounding her with his arms, tightening her against him until she felt the lines of his body melt into hers, and his mouth was on her mouth like nectar.

Murmuring, “Yes… now…” as his kiss released her. She found his lips again, demanding.

“Beg your pardon, sir!”

Jerusha gasped, breaking his hold in reflex; saw the ancient cook with back turned to them in the doorway.

“What is it?” Miroe’s voice was frayed around the edges.

“Midday, sir. Midday meal is ready… but it’ll keep until you are, sir.” Jerusha heard the knowing smile as the cook shuffled back into the pantry.

Miroe sighed heavily, his face trying to smile and frown but only managing to look aggrieved. He reached for her hand, but she slipped it through his fingers before they closed. He looked at her, she saw his surprise.

“You asked the question eloquently.” Her own smile wavered with the static of her emotions. “But you should have asked it another time, Miroe.” She shook her head, pressing her hands to her lips for a moment. “It’s too close to the end for me now… or not close enough.”

“I understand.” He nodded, suddenly noncommital; as though the moment that had just been between them, the moment she had waited so long for, meant nothing to him.

Disappointment and sudden shame pinched her chest. Is that all it would have meant to you? “I’d better be getting back to the city.” So you can tell your Winter doxies how you almost had the Commander of Police for lunch.

“You don’t have to go. We can — pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Maybe you can. But I can’t pretend, any more. Reality is too loud.” She pulled on her coat, began a crooked course to the door.

“Jerusha. Will you be all right?” The concern caught at her.

She stopped, turned back, under control. “Yes. Even a day outside Carbuncle is like a transfusion. Maybe… will I see you again, at the Festival — before the final departure?” She hated herself for asking when he would not.

“No, I don’t think so. I think this is one Festival I want to miss. And I’m not leaving Tiamat; this is my home.”

“Of course.” She felt an artificial smile starting again, like a muscle cramp. “Well, maybe I’ll — call, before I go.” Go to pieces, go to hell…

“I’ll walk you out.”

“Don’t bother.” She shook her head, settled her helmet on, pulling the strap down under her chin. “No need.” She opened the dark, iron hinged door and went out, putting it between them as quickly as she could.

She was halfway down the hill when she heard him calling her name. She looked back to see him come running down the slope after her. She stopped, her hands making awkward fists inside her gloves. “Yes?”

“There’s a storm coming.”

“No there isn’t. I checked the weather bulletin before I left Carbuncle.”

“The hell with the forecasts; if those bastards would get off their simulators and look up at the sky—” He swept a hand from horizon to zenith. “It’ll be here by daybreak tomorrow.”

She looked up, seeing nothing but scattered clouds, a pallid double sundog haloing the eclipsing Twins. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home by dark.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” His eyes were still on the northward horizon.

“Oh.” She felt her face lose all expression.

“The girl who’s staying here, she’s up the coast in a small boat.

She’s not due back before late tomorrow.” He faced her grimly. “I’ve fished her out of the sea half-frozen once already. I might not be so lucky again. I’ll never reach her in time, unless—”

She nodded. “All right, Miroe. Let’s go find her.”

He hesitated. “I — don’t know how to ask you for this kind of favor; I have no right to ask you. But—”

“It’s all right. It’s my duty to help.”

“No. I’m trying to ask you to be — off duty, when you do this. To-forget that you ever met whoever you meet.” He smiled, or grimaced. “You see. I trust you far too much, too.” He began to rub his arms; she realized he had come after her without a coat.

And she remembered his unease at her arrival, and understood it, at last. “She isn’t a mass murderer or anything?”

He laughed. “Far from it.”

“Then I’ve got a terrible memory. Come on, let’s go before you freeze. You can fill me in on the conspiracy charges on the way.”

They went on down the hill, into the wind’s teeth. Jerusha took them up in the patroller, heading north along the sere ribbon of the coast. “All right. I guess I can let myself put the parts together now. You did have something to do with that tech runner they zapped out here a fortnight or so ago. Your guest is a smuggler.” She slid back with a kind of relief into familiar patterns, familiar habits, their old uncomplicated relationship.

“Half-right.”

“Half?” She glanced at him. “Then explain.”

“You remember the — circumstances of our first meeting.”

“Yes,” with a sudden image of Gundhalinu’s face, full of righteous indignation. “He really had you nailed.”

“Your sergeant.” She felt him smile, and then remember. “I’m sorry about — what happened. For your sake.”

“At least it was quick.” And that’s all the mercy we can hope for in this life. “The girl—?” with a growing prescience.

“Is the Summer girl who broke your arm; the one who went off world with the smugglers.”

“She’s back? How?”

“They brought her back with them.”

Jerusha felt the patrol craft buck and swoop in a strong downdraft, reset the controls. “Which means she’s an illegal returnee.” And maybe a whole lot more. “Where’s she been in the meantime?”

“Kharemough.”

She grunted. “Wouldn’t you know. Tell me, Miroe — are you sure her being taken off world was an accident?”

His brows tightened. “One hundred percent. What do you mean?”

“Hasn’t it ever struck you that Moon Dawntreader Summer bears a remarkable resemblance to the Snow Queen?”

“No.” Utter blankness. “I haven’t even seen the Snow Queen in years.”

“What would you say if I told you the Queen knew who she was — was furious over her disappearance? If I told you all my troubles started because I let her get away. What would you say if I told you that Moon Dawntreader is the Queen’s clone?”

He stared. “You have proof?”

“No, I don’t have proof! But I know it; I know Arienrhod had plans for that girl… plans for making her other self the Summer Queen. And if she finds out that Moon is back—”

“They aren’t the same person. They can’t be.” Miroe frowned out at the sea. “You’ve forgotten something about Moon.”

“What?”

“She’s a sibyl.”

Jerusha started, as memory doubled the words. “So she is… But that still doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Or that she isn’t a danger to the Hegemony.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Miroe twisted in his seat until he was facing her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I won’t know until I get there.”

“Get those hides stripped off, there. Hurry up… a white one coming… shelter by dark…” Dogs barking.

Moon felt the words ebb and flow, like the cold tongue of the tide licking her feet, her ankles, her legs. She opened her eyes, to the memory that she did not want to open her eyes and see-But all she saw was the sky, meaningless cloud flotsam drifting. She did not move, afraid to.

“This one’s dead.”

“…is luck, praise the Mother!… never found so many hides…”

“Praise the Snow Queen.” Laughter.

“This one’s not.” A face blotted out the sky, shrouded in white. It knelt, dragged her up to sitting.

“Black.” Moon heard her own voice mumbling like a madwoman’s. “In black. Where… where?” She reached out; dug her fingers into the thick white shoulder for support, as she saw the body that lay beside her own—”Silky!”

The figure in white shoved her away, getting to its feet. “One of those mer-loving bleeders, I guess. Must’ve killed the Hound. Hounds left the job half done on her.” The voice was male, young.

“Silky… Silky…” Moon stretched to reach the ends of inert tentacles.

“Finish it.” A harsh, timeworn voice.

Moon struggled back onto her side as the youth squatted, picking up a rock. She clawed at the fastening of her suit, jerked it open halfway down her stomach as the rock arced over her head. “Sibyl!” She threw the word up like a shield.

The boy dropped the stone from twitching fingers, pushed back his hood. She saw his face lose its inhumanity, saw his confusion follow the track of dried blood upward to her wounded throat.

“Sibyl…” She pointed at the tattoo, praying that it was clear enough, and that he would understand.

“Ma!” The boy sat back on his heels, shouted over his shoulder. “Look at this!”

Other ghost-white figures materialized around her like a spirit tribunal, doubling and shining in her uncertain focus.

“A sibyl, Ma!” A slight female figure danced with eagerness beside her. “We can’t kill her.”

“I’m not afraid of sibyls’ blood!” Moon identified the crone’s voice among the glaring whites as the old woman struck herself on the chest. “I’m holy. I’m going to live forever.”

“Oh, the hell you are.” The girl shoved her brother aside, bending over to peer down at Moon’s throat. She giggled nervously, straightening up again. “Can you talk?”

“Yes.” Moon sat up, put a hand to her throat, one against her swollen face, hoarse with trying not to swallow. She looked across Silky’s sprawled body, saw beyond it more white figures using their skinning knives, mutilating the bodies of the dead mers. She swayed forward, clutching her knees, hiding from the sight of them. 7 didn’t see him. I didn’t. It was someone else! She moaned; her voice was the desolate mourning of a lone met song.

“Then I want her.” The girl turned back to the old woman. “I want her for my zoo. She can answer any question!”

“No!” The old woman slapped at her; she ducked her head. “Sibyls are diseased, the off worlders say they’re diseased. They’re all deceivers. No more pets, Blodwed! You stink the place up with them already. I’m getting rid of those—”

“You just try!” Blodwed kicked her viciously. The old woman howled and stumbled back. “You just try! You want to live forever, you old drooler, you better leave my pets alone!”

“All right, all right…” the crone whined. “Don’t talk to your mother like that, you ungrateful brat. Don’t I let you have anything you want?”

“That’s more like it.” Blodwed put her hands on her hips, looked down at Moon’s huddled grief again, grinning. “I think you’re going to be just what I need.”

“Gods! Oh, my gods,” more a curse than a prayer.

Jerusha stood silently beside Miroe on the lifeless beach, listened to the far, high skreeling of the displaced scavenger birds. Her eyes swept the death-littered field of stones restlessly, not wanting to settle anywhere, register any detail of the scene, but unable to look back at Miroe ashen-faced beside her. Unable to speak a word or even touch him, ashamed to intrude further on a grief past comprehending. This was the Hunt, the mer sacrifice — this stinking abattoir on the barren shore. This was the thing she had resented in principle, without ever trying to approach its reality. But this man had hated the reality.

Miroe moved away from the patrol craft began a path through the mutilated corpses of the mers, inspecting each hide-stripped, bloody form with masochistic thoroughness. Jerusha followed him, keeping her distance; felt her jaws tightening until she wondered whether she would ever be able to open her mouth again. She saw him stop and kneel down by one of the bodies. Moving closer, she saw that it was not a mer. And not human. “A— a dead Hound?”

“A dead friend.” He picked the dillyp’s limp body up like a sleeping child, she saw the dark stain that it left behind on the beach. She watched uncomprehendingly as he carried the body to the edge of the water, entered it without hesitation, wading further and further out until the frigid sea lapped his chest. And then he let the exile go quietly home.

As he came out of the water again Jerusha took off her coat and threw it around his shoulders. He nodded absently; she almost thought that the cold did not reach him. She remembered suddenly that one of the tech runners five years ago had been a dillyp.

“She must be dead, too.” His voice was like steel. She realized that there was no sign of Moon Dawntreader. “Starbuck, the Hounds, did this.” He gestured; the word was a curse. “The last Hunt. On my land.” His hands coiled into fists. “And leaving them like this, mutilating them, this — flaunting. Why?”

“Arienrhod ordered it.” The simple statement seared her like a beam of light, as she saw the only conceivable reason that Arienrhod might have for lashing out at an off worlder a total stranger. Because of me? No, no… not because of me!

Miroe turned as though her guilt shone out like a beacon. “This is a crime against a citizen of the Hegemony, on his granted land.” His voice accused her without needing to say the words. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, you have the jurisdiction. Do you have the control to charge Starbuck with murder — Commander?”

She stiffened. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more, Miroe…” touching the badges on her coat collar. She took a deep breath. “But I swear to you, before your gods and mine, that I will do anything in my power to make it happen.” (seeing the ruined bodies) “She destroys everything she touches, goddamn her—” (BZ’s life gone up in a ball of flame) “—and I’ll make her pay, if I have to die to do it! She won’t get away with it—” (LiouxSked’s life ruined) “—she thinks she’s untouchable, she thinks she’ll be Queen forever; but she won’t get away with it—” (her own life ruined) “—if I have to drown her myself!”

“I believe you, Jerusha,” Miroe said, unsmiling; she heard the cold accusation fade from his voice. “But there isn’t much time.”

“I know.” She looked away, deliberately imprinting her mind with the gaping ruin of a creature whose only crime was life. “I’ve never seen a mer—” She pressed her lips together.

“You haven’t seen one here, either.” His voice was unsteady.

“Not those mounds of dead flesh — those are nothing at all. You haven’t seen the mers until you’ve seen them dance on the water, or heard their song… You haven’t understood the real crime until you know the truth about what they are. They’re not just animals, Jerusha.”

“What?” She turned back. “What are you saying?” No, don’t tell me this; I don’t want to know.

“They’re intelligent beings. There weren’t two murders on this beach today, there were half a hundred. And over the last millennium—”

She swayed, shaken by the wind. “No… Miroe, they’re not. They can’t be!”

“They’re a synthetic life form; the Old Empire gave them intelligence as well as immortality. Moon Dawntreader told me the truth about them.”

“But why? Why would they be intelligent? And how could the Hedge not know… ?” Her voice faded.

“I don’t know why. But I know the Hegemony has to have known the truth, for a millennium. I told Moon when I heard it that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Muscles twitched in his face. “I do now.” He turned his back on her.

Jerusha stood without words, without motion, waiting for the brittle bowl of the sky to crack open and fall, waiting for the weight of injustice to crush this eggshell world of lies and bring it crashing down on her… But there was no change in the sea, in the air, no difference in the profile of the cliffs or the suffocating awareness of death, waste, mourning. “Miroe… come back to the patroller. You’ll — you’ll catch your death.”

He nodded. “Yes. The survivors will return, in time. I have to leave them to — to their own. I can’t help them, I can’t help my own, any more.” He looked toward the small outrigger beached at the water’s edge, its sail flapping mournfully. “She gave me the most important gift anyone could have given me, Jerusha: the truth… She said she was told to come back here; shed had a sibyl’s sending. I don’t understand, I can’t believe it was meant to end like this for her. What does it all mean?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.” Jerusha shook her head. “Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don’t we? We have to go on looking for justice… and settling for revenge.” She started back toward the patrol craft her arms wrapped around her. As they passed the abandoned outrigger it occurred to her that Arienrhod’s Hounds had destroyed Arienrhod’s clone child… and Arienrhod would never know it.