The Snow Queen (25 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
He looked,
and looked away again, still less than comfortable with the publicity of sexual
advances here in the city. “No, thanks. I just want to get out of here.” The
silver of her gown, for a flashing instant, made him think of silver-white hair
.... He pushed on past, trying not to touch her. He felt no real desire for any
woman except Arienrhod now: Arienrhod who was teaching him to desire things he
had never even dreamed about. And the idea of sex for money seemed grotesque
and perverted, even though he knew that half the women and men who offered
their bodies in these places were Winters. Bored or money-hungry, they had
adapted their normal easiness about sex to the off worlders mercenary
appetities.
There were
off worlder prostitutes here, too, controlled by other off worlders higher up
in the covert power web that covered the Maze. There were worlds in the
Hegemony where slavery was an accepted fact or a tacit one—and Arienrhod did
not interfere with the customs of her customers. Some of them looked no
different from the local body sellers (only, to his eyes, more exotic); but
there were the zombies, too, flesh-and-blood victims for hire who satisfied the
kind of customers who weren’t content with dreams. They moved nearly naked
through the crowds, flaunting their scars—no, flaunting was the wrong word.
They were the living dead, they moved vacant eyed, like sleepwalkers; theirs
was the dream, and the nightmare. They were drugged, he had been told, or drugs
had already destroyed their brains. He had been told by Arienrhod that they
felt nothing. And once, when his own mood had turned especially black, he had
almost ...
But the
memory of lying helpless in an alley while four slavers called him “pretty” had
broken the black mood the way his shell flute had broken that night; left him
wondering whether it was really the off worlders he despised, or the off
worlder in himself.
But
Arienrhod had eased his conscience again, brushed away his questions, laughed
gently and told him that there would always be evil, on any world, in any
being, because without it there would be no measure for good ...
doors swept shut behind him, stood letting his lungs clear on the inset slab of
rare metallic ore that served as a doorstep. A tawny cat slipped past his feet,
disappeared into a hidden cranny in the wall, hunting.
“... Come
on, S’eing, gimme a break.” Something familiar yet strange about the voice made
him turn and look along the building front. “I’ll do anything, for gods’ sakes,
anything to get out of this hellhole and back to someplace where they can help
me! Sign me on—” The speaker was an off worlder thick dark hair, brown skin, a
sparse half-grown beard. He sat on a box, propped against the wall, wearing a
stained crewman’s coveralls with no insignia. He was a stranger; he looked like
a strong man slowly starving to death, and
him. But the voice ... “You owe me, damn you, S’eing!” He watched the stranger
push away from the wall with an awkward twist of his spine, catch the pants leg
of the second man’s flightsuit.
The second
man was a freighter captain, he guessed, or something less official: a heavy
man with a scarred face. He stepped back suddenly, jerking the seated man
off-balance.
of empathy that the man’s legs were paralyzed. The scarred officer laughed, the
kind of laughter he’d never wanted to hear again. “I don’t owe you shit,
collect.”
curses followed him down the alley.
The man
called
subtle stares of the passersby.
at last, tentatively, as he watched the man try to drag himself back onto his
seat. The man glanced up at him; slid back down onto the pavement.
“You!”
Hatred followed recognition like night behind day. “Did she send you here? Did
she tell you where to find me? ... Yeah, take a good look, kid! Fill up your
eyes, fill up your brain; and then don’t ever forget that someday she’ll do the
same to you.”
hand closed on a fistful of dust, flung it away.
“Starbuck.”
He was not sure he had even spoken it aloud, but he knew it for the truth.
“She—she said you were dead.” He had imagined she meant fallen thousands of
meters into the sea. But there were platforms and machinery jutting out into the
shaft. One of those must have broken his fall ... and broken his back. And now
he might as well be dead—but he was alive.
unconscious pressure somewhere in his chest, a thing he became aware of only in
its absence. “I’m glad ...”
could get my hands on you I’d finish what I started!” He slumped back again,
letting his hand drop. “Go ahead, enjoy it, kid. I’m still twice the man you
are, and Arienrhod knows it, too.”
burning. The memory of what
compassion like a gnat in a bowl of bitterness. “You’re no man at all, Herne,
any more. And Arienrhod is all mine!” He turned and started away down the
alley.
“You fool!”
laughter beat at his retreating back. “Arienrhod is no man’s! You belong to
her, and she’ll use you until she uses you up—”
he reached the corner of the Street. But he did not start uphill toward the
palace; he stood while his anger drained away and left him purposeless, before
he chose the downhill route. He walked aimlessly for a long time, moving into
the heart of the Maze. He passed the bars and casinos that had become a second
home to him; glanced desultorily at shop windows filled with imported spices
and herbs, jewelry, paintings, caftans, terminals ... and a hundred different
technological toys: costly, sophisticated baubles spread out for the jostling
free port trade and the wondering eyes of the natives. Once every window had
stopped him in his tracks, and a walk in the Maze had been like a walk through
heaven. Now they barely caught his eyes; and somehow, without his being aware
of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of
wonder had turned to vinegar.
Even the
many-colored alleys, the fert’le meeting ground where artisans of this world
and seven more let their creativity bloom, had grown strangely dim and separate
from his own reality. He was no longer drawn into the sight and fragrance and
music as he moved along them; and now the vivid bruise left on his awareness by
death pressed painfully, acutely, against the walls of yielding glass that
closed him in. Surrounded by the beating heart of the city he had come here to
discover, he discovered instead that somehow the thing he had reached out for
had slipped through his hands again. Like everything he had ever cared about,
or counted on .... His hand closed violently over the stem of a kinetic
sculpture in the display stall he was passing; harsh notes clashed among its
spines, leaping like cats. But the jangling isotonic music stopped at his skin,
the cool metal stem swayed into another dimension. Or maybe he only imagined
their unreality; but still it did not pass ...
Why? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong?
He let it
go in disgust as the sculptor came indignantly to the door of his shop. He went
on, realizing only now what alley he had come into: It was the Citron Alley,
and ahead of him he could already see Fate
Ravenglass
sitting as she always did with her trays and trimmings on her doorstep. The
place he had come to once before for shelter, and been taken in without
question or demand. The place that he could always come back to, a haven of
calm and creation in a universe of indifference and broken parts.
He saw that
Fate was not alone, saw her visitor rise from the step in a cloud of
midnight-blue veils embroidered with rainbows. He recognized her friend
Tiewe—by the veils, he had never seen anything more of her than her ebony
hands. He heard the sweet song of her hidden necklace of bells. He had asked
Fate why she never showed herself, thinking that she must be disfigured; but
Fate had said that it was a custom of her homeworld. He had seen only one or
two others like her since, carefully protected by chaperones. Tiewe was uneasy
in the presence of men, and he felt a jealous gratification as he realized that
she was leaving because she had seen him. Fate had many friends—but there were
none who seemed to be anything more than friends to her. He had wondered from
time to time about her ceKbacy.
As Tiewe
moved away, trailing music, Fate’s face turned to his approach: half a smile,
half a frown of concentration. “Sparks—is that you?” Malkin the cat meowed
affirmation from his crouching spot in her doorway.
“Yes.
Hello, Fate.”
“Well, what
a nice surprise. Sit down, don’t be a stranger. You’ve been too much of a
stranger these past months.”
He grimaced
his guilt as he sat down, carefully, among the trays on the stoop. “I know. I’m
sorry, I—”
“No, no,
don’t apologize.” She waved her hands, absolving him goodnaturedly. “After all,
how often have I come to the palace to visit you?”
He laughed.
“Never.”
“Then I
should be grateful you come here at all.” She felt for the mask she had laid
down. “Tell me gossip about the court—what they wear, how they play, what
marvelous inconsequentialities they brood over. I need some cheering up. Tiewe
is inspired with a needle and floss, but such a sad person ...” She looked
away, frowning at nothing, reached out abruptly for a tray of beads and upset
it. “Damn!” Malkin leaped up from the doorway and disappeared into the shop.
“Here, let
me—” Sparks leaned out, barely catching a cascade of shimmering green as it
poured over the step’s edge. He righted the tray and refilled it patiently,
soothed by the mindlessness of the task. “There.” He handed her three beads at
a time, falling back gratefully into the habits and the comfortable feel of his
days with her.
“See how
I’ve missed you.” She smiled at the beads dropped into her palm. “But not just
for your patient hands—for your lilting Summer songs and the freshness of your
wonder.”
said nothing.
“Will you
stay and play for me awhile? It’s been too long between songs in this alley.”
“I—” He
swallowed the stone in his throat. “I didn’t bring my flute.”
“No?” More
incredulous than if he’d told her he wasn’t wearing clothes. “Why not?”
“I—don’t
feel like playing, lately.”
She sat
leaning forward over the mask form, waiting for something more.
“I’ve been
too busy,” defensively.
“I thought
that was what you did for the Queen—played your music.”
“Not any
more. I do ... uh, other things, now.” He shifted on the hard surface of the
step. “Other ... things.”
She nodded;
he had forgotten how disconcerting the gaze of her third eye was. “Like
gambling and drinking too much wine at the Parallax View.” It was a statement
of fact.
“How’d you
know—where I’ve been?” not quite willing to admit the rest of it.
“I can
smell you. Their incense is imported from D’doille. Every place has its own
identity, and so does every drug. And your voice is just a little slurred.”
“Tell me if
I won or lost.”
“You won.
If you’d lost you wouldn’t sound so smug about it.”
He laughed,
but it was not an easy laugh. “You’d make a good Blue.”
“No.” She
shook her head, and searched a bead for its hole with her needle, “To become a
Blue a person needs a certain sense of moral superiority; and I refuse to pass
judgment on my fellow sinners Ah—” as the bead slipped into place. “Some green
feathers, please.”
“I know you
don’t.” He passed feathers to her.
“And is
that why you’ve come here today?” She dipped her fingers in glue and dabbed the
feather stems. “As long as you quit the tables while you’re ahead, the Queen
can’t object to how you spend your free time and money, can she?”
“She wants
me to gamble. She gives me the money.” The words came out inexorably; he could
feel the forbidden secret rise inside him, knowing that it was only a matter of
time.
“She does?
Are you that good?” Fate said it as though she doubted it.