The Snow Queen (29 page)

She had
been at home for almost two weeks, barely daring to leave the house while her
fright slowly healed, before she could bear to think about the mad off worlder
again ... to wonder about his words, and his kindness to her in the midst of
chaos ... harder still, to wonder whether he was even still alive. Knowing that
she would never know, never see him again, still she could not push his
shining-eyed ghost out of her mind.

Even so,
she did not recognize the stranger who sat self-consciously on the bench under
the vine-covered courtyard wall, as her mother led her to “a suitor,” and left
her to stand awkward and uncertain in the man’s eager scrutiny. He was
conservatively dressed in a business suit and cloak; the shadow of a
wide-brimmed hat half obscured his face. But what she could see of the face,
dimly through her veil, was purple and green.

Apprehensively
she threw back her dark blue head veil to let him see her own face, keeping her
eyes averted. She curtseyed, her necklace of silver bells singing in the quiet
air.

“Elsevier.
You don’ recognize me, do you?” The words slurred, but his disappointment
reached her clearly. He pulled off his hat.

But she had
recognized his voice, even distorted as it was, and sat down on the bench
beside him with a small cry of astonishment. “You! Oh ... hallowed Calavre!”
barely aware that she swore. Her hand rose to, but didn’t touch, his face; the
warm brown of his skin was a tapestry of half-healed cuts and bruises, the
sharp line of his jaw was still blurred and swollen.

“I toF your
fadder I was in an acciden’.” He smiled with his lips and his eyes; pointed,
“Jaw’s ‘ired shut,” in explanation.

Her own
face furrowed with empathy, she twisted her hands in her lap.

“It’s aw
right Hardly hurts at all now.” The inquisitors had not given him to the Blues,
but instead had taken turns beating him bloody in holy vengeance for a day and
a night, finally throwing him out into the street at dawn, to crawl away as
fast as he could. “I don’t wanna think about it eidder ...” He laughed once;
but many years would pass before he even told her the smallest part of the
truth. He fell silent, looking at her as though he expected something. “Is your
jaw ‘ired shut too, sister?”

“No!” She
shook her head, jingling. “I—I have thought about you. Over and over. I thought
I’d never see you again; I was afraid for you.” She felt a sudden desire to
cradle his bruised face against her heart. “Why did you come here?” She wove
the cloth of her veil between her fingers. Not as a suitor. But she did not
re-cover her face, or feel a need to, with him.

“I had to
be sure you ‘ere aw right You are aw right He leaned forward.

“Yes. My
father came ... You were so land to me. My father would—”

“No. Blease
don’ tell him about me. Jus’ tell me you listened to my ideas. Tell me I
Planted a seed in your mind ... Tell me you want to know more.”

“Why?” Of all
the questions and answers that filled her mind, all that escaped her mouth was
the one that told him nothing.

“

“Why?”“ But
she saw in his eyes that he understood. “

“Ell ...
because I ‘ant to see you again.”

“Oh! I
could touch the sky with my finger!” She giggled inanely; put her hands over
her mouth at the look on his face. The woman who won this man’s love would have
to win his respect first. “Yes.” She met his eyes boldly, impulsively, but with
a muscle quivering in her cheek. “I do want to know more. Please come again.”

He grinned.
“When?”

“My
father—”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”
Her gaze broke.

“I’ll
come.” He nodded his promise.

“H-how many
wives do you have?” hating herself for asking it.

“How many?”
He looked indignant. “None. On Kharemough we believe in one at a time. One is
enough for a lifetime ... if she’s d’ right one.” He reached into his jacket,
pulled out a handful of pamphlets. “I brought you dese, ‘cause I can’t shpeak
for myself yet. But I wrote dis one ... an’ dis one. Will you read ‘em?”

She nodded,
feeling as though a shock ran up her arm as they touched her hand.

“You have a
beautiful garden here.” A kind of longing crept into his voice. “Do you tend
the flowers yourself?”

“Oh, no.”
She shook her head, a little sadly. “I’m only allowed to come here on special
occasions. And I’m never allowed to do anything that would get me dirty. But I
love flowers. I’d spend all my time here, if I could.”

A look of
peculiar resolution settled over his bruised face. Very deliberately he reached
up to pluck a many-petaled lavender blossom from the vine above their heads. He
put it into her hands. “We all die, someday. Better to live a free life than
die on the vine.”

She cupped
the flower in her hands, inhaling its fragrance. She smiled at him more than at
his words.

He smiled
back. “Till tomorrow, den.” He got stiffly to his feet.

“You’re
going—”

“Godda
meeting at d’ university over in Merdy, tonight.” He beamed at her
disappointment, and leaned down, conspiratorial. “I’m an outside agitator, y’
know.”

“You won’t—?”
She dared to touch him.

“Uh-uh.” He
pulled his hat down over his eyes. “No more shpeeches; at leas’ till I can open
my mouf again ... Goodbye, sister.” He moved away across the courtyard with a
rolling lurch, before she could realize that she still didn’t know his name.
She looked down at the stack of propaganda, read,
“Partners in a
New World
” by TJ
Aspundh
. She sighed. “What’s that he gave you?” Her mother peered at the
pamphlets suspiciously.

“Uh ...
l-love poems.” Elsevier tucked them hastily into her waistband and pulled down
her veil. “He wrote some of them himself.”

“Hmm.” Her
mother shook her head, and bells sang. “But he’s a Kharemoughi; he gave your
father a video com outlet for the right to see you. My lord was very pleased.
And it’s up to him in the end, after all ... not to us.”

“Why?”
Elsevier got up, crinkling with papers. “Why isn’t it?”

Her mother
took the flower out of her hand and led her back to the women’s quarters.

TJ came
faithfully to see her, a paragon of respectability before her parents, in
private a headstrong dreamer falling in love not with the girl she was, but the
woman she could be. He brought her more revolutionary literature disguised as
love poems; but before she could begin to explore the new world whose horizons he
widened every day, her halting attempts to assert herself with her family led
to the discovery of her hidden cache of pamphlets, and he was banished from her
life.

“But you
didn’t let them keep you apart.” Moon leaned on the seat back. “Did you run
away?”

“No, my
dear.” Elsevier shook her head, folding her hands with remembered obedience.
“My father locked me in the tower room because he was afraid I would, before I
even thought of it.” She smiled. “But TJ was dauntless. He came back one night in
a hovercraft, climbed in my window, and kidnapped me.”

“And you—”

“I was
frantic! I wasn’t nearly as enlightened as he thought I was; or I did; in
asserting myself I’d really only been pleasing someone else again ... him. And
now he’d ruined my reputation. I nearly died of shame that night. But by
morning we’d reached the spaceport, and there was no going back.” She looked
out at the city, seeing another place and time. “We were always like that, all
our lives, I suppose: him believing in “Be certain you’re right, and then go
ahead,” me believing in “Do what you must.” ... But even that terrible night,
there was no doubt in my mind that he’d done the deed with the purest of
hearts, that he loved me in a way I had never dared to dream about being loved.
I chided him—years later—for committing such a male-dominant act. He only
laughed, and told me he was just trying to work within the system.

“We were
married at the spaceport by one of those dreadful notary machines, and the
passage to Kharemough was our honeymoon. Poor TJ! We were halfway across the
galaxy before I let him touch me. But once I learned that all I’d been told
about—my body all my life was a lie, it was easier to believe that I had a mind
as well, and nourish it. We were different in many ways ... but our souls were
one.” She sighed.

Darkness
swallowed them unexpectedly as the tram entered one of the transparent spokes
that spanned the starship harbor’s vacuum to the spaceport hub of the city
wheel. Moon lost the images of El sevier’s words as they flowed into a memory
of her own, of firelight and wind, warm kisses, and two hearts beating
together. The empty blackness seeped into the space in her own soul which
should have been filled and hid her face, as her face turned as bleak as her
heart. “Wish I could have known him.” Cress’s face shone briefly as he lit one
of the spicy-smelling reeds everyone here seemed to smoke.

“He gone,”
Silky said, pointlessly, remarking on the obvious. He spoke barely intelligible
Sandhi, the international language of Kharemough, which Moon had been learning
with Elsevier’s help. But the thoughts behind his murky mutterings were as
opaque to her as they had ever been.

“TJ would
have driven you right up the wall, Cress,” Elsevier said, fondly. “He was
always switched on. You move through a much thicker temporal medium; you’re
much better suited to astrogation

Cress
laughed; it became a fit of coughing.

“You know
they told you not to smoke!” Elsevier reached forward and took the glowing reed
out of his hand; he didn’t protest.

“Gone,”
Silky said. “Gone. Gone ...” as though he were obsessed by the feel of the
word.

“Yes,
Silky,” Elsevier murmured. “The good always die young, even if they live to be
a hundred.” She stroked one of the maimed tentacles draped across the back of
Cress’s seat. “I never saw him as angry, or as fine, as the day he took you
from that street carnival in Narlikar.” She shook her head, her necklace of
bells rang silverly.

“He
suffered everyone’s pain; and that was why he wanted to end it. Thank the gods
he was so strong. I don’t know how he lived with it ....”

Where is
Sparks
now, and who is
hurting him? And why can’t I help him?
Moon’s booted feet moved restlessly beside the
seat; she stared at Silky with sudden, unwilling insight.
Oh, Lady—I can’t wait longer!
Her knuckles turned white on the seat
back.

“To think
he cut all his radical ties because he was afraid for me —when I knew he would
gladly have died for his beliefs himself. I was incensed; but I was glad, too:
He was a pacifist, among people who were not.” She took a puff from Cress’s
reed. “And then he took up smuggling! Oh—”

The tram
burst into the light again, on the passenger level of the star port itself.
Wallscreens were everywhere along their path, with changing scenics of other
worlds; in the lower levels of the complex an unimaginable number of goods
imported from all of those worlds waited shipment down to the planet’s surface.
Countless more shipments from Kharemough’s sophisticated industries passed
through the star port in the return trade: There were other scenics, designed
to awe arriving visitors, that glorified the technological heights that could
sustain major manufacturing processes in space itself. Moon had been told that
this was the largest floating city, but not the only one, above Kharemough;
there were thousands of other production stations and factories, whose workers
spent most of their lives in space between the planet and its moons. The idea
of spending a lifetime in black isolation haunted and depressed her.

The tram drifted
to a stop, in the waiting area for travelers down to the planet’s surface. Moon
followed Cress and Silky wordlessly through the exploding crowds, to claim
space on a lounge while El sevier went to the ticketing machines.

“Ah ...”
Cress settled back, looking up at the omnipresent video displays. Here they
changed from scene to scene of the star port exterior: now the hazy,
cloud-dressed surface of Kharemough; now the surface of the nearer moon, an
abstract painting of industrial pollutants; now the glaring image of an
interstellar freighter, a chain of coin discs strung out on the matte blackness
like a necklace of drilled shell beads. He sat on Silky’s far side, protecting
Silky from strangers by the barrier of their bodies; Silky gaped at the sluggish
patterns of passersby, oil on a water surface. “That’s what I like about
Kharemough—they always try to keep your mind occupied.” A false note sounded in
the easy words as the starships flashed onto the screen. Elsevier had said that
Cress had once been a journeyman astrogator for a major shipping line. “Too bad
we can’t see the Prime Minister’s ships; but he’s not due home for a couple
more weeks. That’s a sight to put your eyes out for sure, young mistress.”

Moon
glanced down from the screens. “Why do you always call me that? My name is
Moon!”

“What?”
Cress looked at her blankly, shrugged. “I know it is, young mistress,”
deliberate. “But you’re a sibyl; and I owe you my life. You deserve to be
addressed with honor. Besides,” he smiled, “if I let it get too casual, I might
fall in love with you.”