The Snow Queen (21 page)

The Hounds
stood off to the left, their skins glistening, their inner eyelids lying across
their nacreous, expressionless eyes. They were here to pledge service to the
winner—and to dispose silently of the loser’s corpse. In ten years he had never
fathomed their endless droning dialogues, or cared that he hadn’t. He didn’t
know whether they had any sex lives, or even any sex. Their intelligence was
supposed to be subhuman, but how the hell could you judge an alien mind? They
were used on some worlds as slaves; but so were human beings. He wondered
briefly what they were thinking as they turned to watch him; wondered if they
ever thought about anything a man could relate to, besides killing.

He made his
formal bows, to Arienrhod, to the boy. “I’ve come. Name your weapon.” It was the
first time that the naming had not been his to say. Arienrhod’s eyes touched
him as he spoke the ritual words; but there was no reassurance in her glance,
only a reaffirmation of the coldness that had grown in her since the boy’s
arrival. Then was she really still infatuated with that Summer bastard? Did she
really believe that he had a chance?

Starbuck
kneaded one fist inside the other, suddenly thrown off balance. Damn her, she
wasn’t going to get away with it! He was going to kill that kid, and then shed
have him back in her bed again whether she wanted him or not! He struggled to
force his rising, murderous anger into a straitjacket of concentration. “Well,
what’s your choice?”

“The wind.”
Sparks Dawntreader smiled tightly, and swept his hand around, pointing. “We
stand on the bridge there—and whoever controls the winds better will still be
there when it’s finished.” He took his flute slowly from his belt pouch, and
held it out.

Starbuck’s
voice caught on a single barb of startled laughter. So the kid had imagination
to match his gall ... and his stupidity. The nobles with their whistles could
hold a quiet space of air around themselves while they crossed over the pit,
but they couldn’t manipulate two spaces at once. With his own control box, he
could produce the chords and overtones that would keep him protected and still
attack. If the kid thought that he was better equipped than a noble, with that
shell flute of his, then he was in for the biggest surprise of his life—and the
last.

Arienrhod
moved back, her cape billowing like mist, like the translucent wind panels
above the bridge, left the two of them alone facing one another. “May the best
man win.” Her voice was expressionless.

Without
waiting for
Sparks
to move first, Starbuck walked past him and onto the bridge. He crossed it
almost carelessly, his fingers pressing the singing sequence of buttons at his
belt. Once the wind licked him and his breath caught, but he was sure no one
had noticed. He stopped at last, more than halfway along the span, and turned;
stood waiting with one hand on his hip and the other at his belt. He had never
stood still above the abyss before; the groaning entrails of the city machinery
seemed infinite beneath him, and the span on which he stood far too frail. He
pressed the piercing tone buttons automatically, massaged by the fluctuations
of the pressure cell around him, very carefully not looking down.

Sparks
lifted his flute to his lips and
stepped out onto the bridge; the fluid purity of the notes reached Starbuck
clearly. He saw with some surprise that it actually worked—the music wrapped
the kid like a spell, he moved in quiet air, the blaze of his hair and the
green silk of his shirt unruffled. He must have spent a lot of time analyzing
this place. Not that it was going to do him any good.

Starbuck
pressed a second button when the boy was barely out past the brink. The
bellying translucent panels shifted in the air; wind swept up from an
unexpected quarter and struck like a snake at the boy’s back. He staggered and
went down on one knee at the lipless edge of the walkway; but his fingers never
released the flute, and he countered the cross draft deftly, throwing himself
back onto his feet in the center of the path. He came on, sudden ruthless anger
in his face; a rush of shrill notes danced ahead of him, guarding his advance,
blurring the sounds of Starbuck’s own feint and parry.

Starbuck
stumbled, barely managing to keep his feet as the wind struck him hard across
the face. His eyes watered; he blinked frantically, trying to see when he
should have been listening. The wind caught him from behind and knocked him
down. On hands and knees he found the controls again, stabilized his space of
air with desperate skill as he climbed to his feet. The wind panels cracked and
rattled as Sparks attacked again, grinning now with mirthless concentration. It
staggered him, but he managed to counter, notes clashing in the air; realizing
at last that the contest was not going to be one-sided ... at least not in the
way he had imagined. He had never paid enough attention to the boy’s music to
realize his virtuosity with that damned piece of shell. He could produce
overtones with it, and his fingers were so quick that the notes came close to
being chords—close enough. And the boy was playing this game as though he had
prepared for the match with all the skill of his musician’s ear and his
would-be technician’s mind.

But it was
a game of death, and out of all the skills he, Starbuck, had that the boy could
have chosen, manipulating the winds was the least exercised. He began to sweat;
for the first time in longer than he could remember, he began to feel afraid
for his own life. The wind batted him again when he thought he was safe. He
struck back viciously, sending the wind in from three different quarters, heard
the boy’s shout of surprise as one arm of it caught him unawares and sent him
reeling forward. But he stayed on the bridge and recovered his equilibrium
before another sweep could finish him.

Starbuck
swore under his breath. There were too many options, there was no way to
predict what effect the mixing of their separate tone commands would have, even
if they could outguess each other. He crouched low, started back toward
Sparks
across the bridge;
concentrating grimly on keeping himself protected instead of on attacking. The
closer they were to one another, the less the kid could afford to threaten his
own stability by shifting the winds around them. If he could just get his hands
on that flute and crush it, then he could still finish thisA clout of cold
force knocked him flat; he sprawled sideways, flailing desperately as his feet
went off one edge and head and shoulders slid out over the other. For an
endless moment he looked straight down into the black-walled pit, where the dim
spirals of machine lights glittered like the endless lost fire of a Black
Gate’s heart; and the smell of the sea and the moaning dirge were strong inside
his head. In that moment he lay still, waiting, hands clutching at the narrow
edge of the arcing span, hypnotized by the immediacy of death.

But the
final formless blow did not fall, or rise, to tumble him over the edge; the
paralysis released him and he raised his head, saw Sparks Dawntreader standing
frozen like himself, unable to make the kill.

He levered
himself back onto the meter-wide solidity of the span, reacting instinctively
now; flung himself up and into a protective hole in the air. He ran forward,
almost in reach before the boy finally reacted, lashing out at him with a
double buffet of wind. He countered it easily, and at the same time brought his
booted foot up with all his strength to kick the boy in the groin.

Sparks
collapsed with an animal cry of
agony. The flute stayed in his fist, but it was no use to him now, no danger to
his rival ... Starbuck backed slowly away, savoring his triumph, sorry only
that the kid hurt too much to care about what was going to happen to him next.
Starbuck lifted his head to look at Arienrhod, still standing on the brink, far
away, like some unattainable dream. In another moment the road to her would be
clear again. His hand moved at the controls on his belt; Arienrhod moved
slightly where she stood.

Two
discordant notes collided in the air. Astounded, he felt his own feet go out
from under him as the wind struck him down. Not the boy, not the boy—himself!
Falling’Arienrhod!” He screamed her name, a curse, a prayer, an accusation, as
he fell; and it followed him down into darkness.

The Black
Gate filled the shielded viewscreen that filled the center of the wall, a
flaming whorl against the amber blackness of the distant starfield. In the
heart of this stellar cluster there had once been a glut of cosmic flotsam to
feed a black hole’s hunger; through eons it had been mostly consumed, and the
deadly excrement of the hole’s gravitational radiation had dimmed. But it had
also captured the star the Tiamatans called the Summer Star; held it prisoner
on a narrow tether, siphoning away its chromosphere. The minutiae of dust and
molecules blazed up, giving off their potential energy, as they were sucked
down to destruction, as this ship was being sucked down ...

Elsevier
felt the hunger of the Gate lick out at her, felt the first tingling of
physical sensation, the slow, compulsive movement of her weightless body toward
the image on the wall ... felt it too in the depths of her mind, where it
probed her secret terror of dismemberment. The firmly yielding cushion of the
transparent cocoon that wrapped her held her back with gentle reassurance.

She glanced
down past her drifting feet toward the ship’s center of mass, where the girl
Moon hung in another light-catching chrysalis. Moon shifted restlessly, like a
fire moth impatient for birth; her luridly pink flightsuit caught reflections
from the console suspended around her. A crown of silver mesh hung useless in
the air above her silver-gilt hair—the crown that Cress should have worn, the
symb helmet of an astrogator. Moon looked up to find Elsevier looking down, and
Elsevier saw the emotions struggle on her face.

“Moon, are
you ready?”

“No ...”

Elsevier
stiffened, afraid of what an outburst of rebellion from the girl could do to
them. She thought she had convinced Moon that this trip was no more than a
brief detour in her journey to find her cousin. But if she refused to begin a Transfer
now’I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand anything, I don’t understand
how—”

Elsevier
felt a feeble smile form as she realized that it was only doubt on Moon’s face,
and not refusal. She had only read her own guilty conscience there. “You don’t
need to, Moon. Leave that to me. Trust me, I’m not ready to meet the Render
yet. Just input all the data the way I showed you.”

Moon looked
back at the screen wordlessly, her awe tempered by a half-formed comprehension
of the Gate’s terrible power. They were above its pole of rotation, already
trapped in the undertow of its black gravitational heart: that force so
inexorable that light itself could not break free of it. This hole, at twenty
thousand solar masses, was large enough that a specially designed ship fell
through the event horizon before it could be ripped apart by the tidal forces
working on its mass. But only an astrogator trained in singularity physics, and
in symbiotic linkup with the ship’s computers, could maintain the critical
balance of its stabilizers. Only an astrogator could make certain they entered
the Gate at the precise point that would put them in the pipeline for their
chosen destination. Only an astrogator—or an ignorant girl from a backward
planet whose mind was already in symbiosis with the greatest data bank in known
space and time. “Do you want me to begin Transfer? Elsevier—?” Moon looked up
at her again, face set in a shield of determination.

Elsevier
took a deep breath, postponing the inevitable moment. But the inevitable moment
had already passed, and now she must say it. “Yes, Moon. Keep your eyes on the
viewscreen and begin Transfer.”
And the
gods forgive me, as they protect you, child.
Because you’ll
never see your home again
.
Moon’s eyes closed for a brief moment, as if in a prayer to her own goddess,
and then she focused on the shining vortex before them.
“Input.”
Elsevier pressed a
button on the remote at her belt as the girl’s slim body quivered into a trance
state; the data concerning their entrance flashed across the image on the
screen, and was gone again. If she was right—and she couldn’t afford to be
wrong—that should be enough to start the necessary information feeding back
into the ship’s guidance system. Without an astrogator’s implants no human
could make full use of the ship’s computer symb circuits, but the sibyl
Transfer would supply the information the computers could not.

“It done.”
Silky’s voice, speaking broken Sandhi, reached her in a sibilant whisper across
the control room’s silence. “Is girl hurting?”

“How do I
know?” sharp with the stab of her doubt. She frowned down across the open space
at him. His amphibian body shone through its own cocoon, silken with the oils
that kept him from dehydrating. He sounded strangely unsettled; it struck her
that he must feel an empathy for this helpless innocent torn loose from the
world she knew, at the mercy of betraying strangers.

“Could she
die?”

“Silky,
damn it!” Elsevier bit her lip and looked back at the spreading malignancy of the
Gate. “You know I can’t answer that . but you know I wouldn’t have done it if I
believed that she would. You know that, Silky ... But what choice did any of us
have, except to try? I told her it would be a long trance; she accepted that.”