The Snow Queen

2

The city of Carbuncle sits like a great spiral shell cast up at the edge of the sea, high in the northern latitudes on the coast of Tiamat ’s largest island. It breathes restlessly with the deep rhythms of the tide, and its ancient form seems to belong to the ocean shore, as though it had actually been born of the Sea Mother’s womb. It is called the City on Stilts, because it wades on pylons at the sea’s edge; its cavernous underbelly provides a safe harbor for ships, sheltering them from the vagaries of the sea and weather. It is called Starport because it is the center of off world trade; although the real star port lies inland, and is forbidden ground to the people of Tiamat. It is called Carbuncle because it is either a jewel or a fester, depending on your point of view.

Its resemblance to a sea creature’s cast-off home is deceptive. Carbuncle is a hive of life in all — or at least many — of its varied forms, human and inhuman. Its lowest levels, which open on the sea and are home to laborers, sailors, and island immigrants, rise and merge into the Maze, where the interface of tech and non tech, local and off worlder, human and alien, catalyzes an environment of vibrant creativity and creative vice. The nobility of Winter laugh and argue and throw away their money, experimenting with exotic forms of stimulation elbow to elbow with the off world traders who brought them. And then the nobles return to their own levels, the upper levels, and pay homage to the Snow Queen, who sees everything and knows everything, who controls the currents of influence and power that move like water through the seashell convolutions of the city. And they find it hard to imagine that a pattern which has lasted for nearly one hundred and fifty years, guided by her same hand, will not go on forever.

“…Nothing lasts forever!”

Arienrhod stood silently and quite alone, eavesdropping as the voices poured out of the speaker in the sculptured base of the mirror. The mirror was also a viewscreen, but dark now, showing her only her face. The unseen nobles were discussing a broken-stringed selyx, and not the future; but they might as well have been, because the breaking of the former and the ending of the latter were ultimately interrelated, and her own mind was absorbed with the future — or the lack of one.

She stood at the wall, which was also in this chamber a window rising up to the star-pointed pinnacle of the roof. She stood on top of the world, for she was the Snow Queen and she stood in her sanctuary at the city’s peak. She could gaze down its folded slopes, the undulations of a mountain’s side cracked from the mass of land, or out across the white-flecked, iron-gray sea. Or, as she did now, up into the sky, where the night was a glowing forge fired by the incandescence of fifty thousand suns: the stellar cluster into which this footloose system had blundered eons ago. The stars like flaming snow did not move her — had not, for more years than she could remember. But one star, insignificant, unremarkable, moved her with another emotion darker than wonder. The Summer Star, the star whose brightening marked their approach to the Black Gate, which had captured the roving Twins and made them its perpetual prisoners.

The Black Gate was a phenomenon the ofiworlders called a revolving black hole, and among the things they did not share with her own people was the secret of using such openings on another reality for faster-than-light travel. She only knew that through the Gate lay access to seven other inhabited worlds, some so far away that she could not even comprehend the distances. They were bound to each other, and to countless uninhabitable worlds, because the Black Gate let starships through into a region where space was twisted like a string, tied into knots so that far became near and time was caught up in the loop.

And they were bound together too as tributary worlds of the Kharemough Hegemony. Autonomous worlds — she smiled faintly — thanks to the relativistic time lags ships acquired in transit to and from the Gates. But she was a loyal supporter of the Hegemony, because without it the Winter clans would not have access to the off world technology that gave them dignity and purpose and pleasure, that raised them above the level of the Summers, superstitious fish-farmers reeking of seaweed and tradition.

In return Tiamat offered off world voyagers a stopover and a haven, a resting place or meeting place to ameliorate the long passages between other Hegemony worlds. It was unique as a kind of crossroads, because it alone orbited its Gate: Even though its orbit was long, it was still closer and more accessible by light-years than any other world.

Arienrhod turned her back on the stars and moved silently across the sensuous synthetic pile of the pastel carpet to the mirror again. She confronted her own reflection with the same porcelain lack of expression that she used on the off world trade representatives or delegations of the nobility, assessing the elaborate piling of the milk white hair behind the snow-starred diadem, the flawless translucency of her skin. She ran a hand along her cheek, down her jewel stranded throat and over the glittering silk of her shirt in what was almost a caress; feeling the firm youthfulness of her body, as perfect now as it had been almost one hundred and fifty years ago, on the day of her investiture. Or was it—? She frowned faintly, leaning closer to her own face. Yes… Satisfaction, in the eyes that were the colors of mist and moss agate.

There was another reason why the off worlders came to Tiamat bearing gifts: She held the key to growing old without aging. The seas of this world were a fountain of youth, from which the richest and most powerful paid to drink, and she personally controlled the source — the slaughter of mers. Hers were the calculated judgments that determined which off world merchant or official would serve Winter’s interests best in return for this unique commodity… hers were the not-quite-casual whims that gave her favored nobility rights of exploitation in the ranges of the sea, or the right to a precious vial of silvery fluid. It was said that the closeness of a given noble to the Queen’s favor could be estimated by the noble’s apparent youth.

But nothing lasts forever. Not even eternal youth. Arienrhod frowned again; the gilded atomizer twitched as her hand tightened. She lifted it, opened her mouth, and inhaled the heavy silver spray. It turned the back of her throat to ice, making her eyes water. She sighed with relief, a release from anticipation. The ideal state of preservation was maintained by a daily renewal of the “water of life,” as the off worlders euphemistically named it. She found the term amusing, if only for its hypocrisy: It was not water, but an extract from the blood of an indigenous sea creature, the mer; and it had as much to do with death — the death of the mer — as it did with the long life of a human being. Every user was as aware of that fact as she was, on one level or another. But what was the life of an animal, compared to the chance for eternal youth?

So far technology had failed to reproduce the extract, a benign virus that enhanced the body’s ability to renew itself without genetic error. The virus died after a short time outside the body of its original host, no matter how carefully it was maintained. Its half-life in any other mammaloid creature was just as limited, so a constant supply was needed, for a constant demand. And that meant prosperity for as long as Winter reigned.

But the Summer Star was already visible in the daytime sky; spring was official, the Change was coming, even the Summers would be aware of that by now. This world was moving into its high summer at last, the time when the unnatural stresses created by their approach to the black hole caused a flare-up of the Twins’ own energy, and Tiamat became insufferably hot. The Summers would be forced to move north from their ranges in the equatorial islands, and their influx would disrupt Winter’s status quo as they filled the interstices of its territory.

But that was only a part of the greater change that would overtake her people. Because the Twins’ approach to the black hole would also make Tiamat a lost world to the Hegemony… She looked back out the window, at the stars. As the Twins neared the Black Gate, as its other tormented captive, the Summer Star, brightened in Tiamat’s heaven, the stability of the Gate itself deteriorated. The passage from Tiamat to the rest of the Hegemony and back was no longer simple or certain. Tiamat ceased to be a meeting place and stopover for Hegemony travelers, the outflow of the water of life and the inflow of technology ceased together. And Tiamat was an embargoed world; the Hegemony allowed no indigenous technological base to be developed, and without the crucial knowledge of how their imported goods were made, the machinery of Winter’s society would quickly, irrevocably decay. Even without the Summers moving north at the Change to hurry it along, the world as she knew it would cease to exist. She detested even the thought of life in such a world. But then, that would scarcely concern her, would it? They say death is the ultimate sensory experience.

Her laughter sounded in the quiet room. Yes, she could laugh at death now, even though she had been withholding payment from it for one hundred and fifty years. Soon it would claim its debt; and the Summers would take payment from her at the next, the final Festival, because that was the way of things. But she would have the last laugh on the Summers. At the last Festival, nearly a generation ago, she had sown among the unsuspecting Summers the nine seeds of her own resurrection: nine clones of herself, to be raised among them and accepted by them as their own; who would learn their ways and, being the children of her mind, know how to manipulate them when the time came.

She had kept track of the children as they grew, always believing there would be at least one among them who would be all that she herself was… and there had been one. Only one. The off worlder doctor’s pessimism almost twenty years ago had not been purely spite; three clones had been lost in spontaneous abortions, others were born with physical deformities or grew up retarded and emotionally disturbed. Only one child was reported to be perfect in every way… and she would make that child the Summer Queen.

She reached down, picked up the small, ornate picture cube from the tabletop beside her. The face within it might have been a picture of herself as a girl. She rotated the cube, watched the laughing face change expressions through three dimensions as it moved. The island trader who kept track of the child’s progress had taken the hologram for her, and she found herself moved by strange and unexpected emotions when she looked into it. Sometimes she found herself longing to see more of the child than just this picture… to touch her or hold her, to watch her at play, watch her grow and change and learn: to see herself as she must have been, so long ago that she could not really remember it any more.

But no. Look at the child, dressed in coarse, scratchy cloth and greasy fish skins, probably eating out of a pot with her hands in some drafty stone hovel. How could she bear to see herself like that — to see in microcosm what this world would be reduced to in a few more years, when the off worlders abandoned it again? But it might not have to happen again, at least not so completely, if only her plan could be carried through. She looked more closely at the face in the picture, so like her own. But when she looked this closely, there was something that was not the same, something — missing.

Experience, that was all that was missing. Sophistication. Soon she would find a way to bring the girl here, explain things to her, show her what she had to look forward to. And because she would be explaining those things to herself, the girl would understand. What little technology the off worlders left to them must not be allowed to die again. This time they must preserve and nurture it; at least try to meet the off worlders as something more than barbarians when they returned again…

She crossed the room abruptly, switched the endless courtly banalities into oblivion by twisting a pearl on the mirror’s base. She changed the audio and brightened video to pick up images from another hidden eye. The inconspicuous incorruptibility of mechanical spies and the sheer pleasure of manipulating them had led her to have installed a network of thousands throughout the levels of the city. Omniscience and license were blossom and thorn on the same vine, both fulfilling their separate needs while feeding from the same source.

She looked now on the image of Starbuck; watched him striding impatiently inside the mirror’s heart. The muscles knotted and flowed as he moved, under his dark off worlder skin. He was a powerful man, and he seemed too large for the confinement of the chamber’s intimacy. He was nearly naked; he had been waiting for her to come to him. She stared with frank admiration, her memory a kaleidoscope of images of passion, forgetting for the moment that he had come to bore her like all the rest. She heard him mutter a profanity, and decided that she had kept him waiting long enough.

Starbuck was many things, but he was not a patient man; and knowing that Arienrhod knew that, and used it against him, did nothing to improve his mood. He might have spent the time she kept him waiting contemplating the fine line between love and hate, but he was not particularly introspective, either. He swore again, more loudly, aware that he was probably under observation, knowing it would amuse her. Keeping her satisfied, in every way, was his chief function, as it had been that of the Starbucks before him. He had the mental facility of an intellectual, but it was guided by the inclinations of a slave dealer and no morality at all: qualities that together with his physical strength had freed the youth known as Herne from a futureless life on his homeworld of Kharemough to follow a successful career of trading in human lives and other profitable commodities. Qualities ideally suited to his current life as Starbuck.

“Who is Starbuck?” He posed the rhetorical question to the mirror-inlaid bottle on the small cabinet by the bed, laughed suddenly, and poured himself a drink of native wine. (Gods! the things these stinking backwater worlds could find to get high on. He almost spat. And the things a man got used to…) Even now he spent a part of his time inside his old Herne-persona, drugging and gaming with casual off world acquaintances, sampling the diversions of the Maze. And as often as not they would turn, looking him straight in the face with bleary eyes, and ask him the same question: Who is Starbuck?

And he could have told them that Starbuck was a traitor, the off world advisor for this world’s Queen, who worked to protect her interests against the Hegemony’s. He could have told them that Star buck was the Hunter, who called up his alien Hounds and led the pack on the Queen’s orders to a grim harvesting of mers. He could have told them that Starbuck was the Queen’s lover, and would be until some quicker, shrewder challenger brought him down and became the new Starbuck — for the Queen was traditionally the Sea

Mother incarnate; she had many lovers, as the sea had many islands. All of those things would have been true, and several more besides. He could even have told them that he was Starbuck, collecting the confidences he needed to keep the Queen’s position in negotiations firm — and they would have laughed, as he did.

Because Starbuck could have been any one of them, and as easily none of them. He merely had to be an off worlder And he merely had to be the best. Starbuck’s anonymity was assured by ritual and law; he existed above and beyond all authority, all retribution except the Queen’s.

Starbuck turned, gazing over the rim of his drink at the incongruous clothing laid out on a shelf along the mirrored wall by the mirrored door: the calculated black silk and leather of his formal court attire, and the traditional hooded helmet that masked his real identity, that made Herne interchangeable with a dozen other ruthless and power-hungry predecessors. The helmet crested in a set of curving, steely spines like the antlers of a stag — the symbol of all the arrogant power any man could ever want to wield, or so he had thought when he first settled it onto his head. Only later had he come to realize that it belonged to a woman, and so did the real power — and so did he.

He sat down suddenly on the turned-back covers of the long bed; watched his endless reflections in the walls mimic him mindlessly into infinity. Seeing the rest of his life? He frowned, pushing the image away, running a hand through the thick black curls of his hair. He had been Starbuck for better than ten years now, and he was determined to go on being Starbuck… until the Change. He wielded power and enjoyed it, and it had never mattered to what end, or where the real source of the power lay.

Didn’t matter? He looked down at the heavy strength of his arms, his body still hard and youthful, thanks to privilege. And the butchering of mers… No, the slaughter didn’t matter at all, as an end it was only the means to a greater end. But the source, yes, that mattered. She mattered — Arienrhod. All the things that had the power to move him were hers — beauty, wealth, absolute control . eternal youth. In the first moment he had seen her at audience in the palace, with her former Starbuck at her side, he had known that he would kill to possess her, to be possessed by her. He imagined her body moving against his own, the bridal veil of her hair, the red jewel of her bitter mouth… tasting power and privilege and passion incarnate.

And so it did not strike him as incongruous that he moved unthinkingly from the bed to his knee, as the door opened and made the vision reality.