The Snow Queen (34 page)

Birds whose
colors would be strident in the daylight fluttered down into her lap, pastel
and gray, murmuring placidly. She smoothed their delicate feathered backs,
remembering that it was for the last time; that after tomorrow there would be
no peaceful gardens, but only the Black Gate ... She rubbed her arms, suddenly
feeling the night’s chill.

“Citizen,
what
are you doing in my office?” Jerusha
glared across the landfill of official refuse heaped by her terminal and
mounting in drifts to the corners of the desk, in the corners of the room. “I
was told to come here. About my permits.” The shopkeeper twisted his ties,
midway between uncertainty and truculence. “They said you’d tell me why I
haven’t heard any th—”

“Yes, I
know that. And any sergeant could look it up for you, any patrolman with half a
brain!”
Gods, if I could get through a
day without raising my voice ... if I could get through one hour
. She ran a
hand through the tight red-black curls of her hair; tugged. “Who the hell sent
you here?”

“Inspector
Man—”

“—tagnes,”
she echoed him. “Well, he sent you to the wrong place. Go back to the front
desk and tell the duty officer to find out.”

“But he
said—”

“Don’t take
no for an answer this time!” She waved him toward the door, already looking
down at the half-read report still waiting her acknowledgment on the screen,
reaching for the intercom button. “Sergeant, wake up your brain and screen
these idiots! What do you think you’re out there for?”

“Hell of a
way to run a world, damn—” The invective was lost as the door shut behind the
shop man

“Sorry,
Commander,” the sergeant said, sullenly disembodied. “Shall I sent in the next
one?”

“Yes.”
No. No, no more
. “And get me Mantag-No,
cancel that.” She let up on the speaker button. She could bust Mantagnes right
off the force for his harassment ... but if she did shed have open mutiny on
her hands, instead of just open resentment. In the years since she had become
Commander her position with the force had gone from bad to worse.
And he knows it. He knows, the bastard ...
She
stared at the report printout blindly. Their main computer had crashed
monumentally—months ago—and thrown their entire records system into chaos. Even
now it barely functioned at half normal efficiency; even Kharemoughi expertise
hadn’t been able to put things right, because somehow they were missing the
critical components.. She had been trying to get their records back in order
for months; trying to get through this one report for an hour, half a minute at
a time, getting nowhere. She punched APPROVED, and let it pass unread.
Getting nowhere.
Sliding backwards, being buried alive
-She
rummaged among the crumpled, empty packets in her desk drawer for one with any
iesta pods left in it.
Damn, almost
gone—how will I ever make it through the day?

The door
opened, not answering her question, and Captain—
oh, gods, what’s his name?
—entered and saluted. “Captain KerlaTinde
reporting, Commander,” as if he hadn’t expected her to remember. She was used
to the coldness, and the insolent tone, by now. The force hated her guts,
almost every single man of them, and it was close to mutual by now. Discipline
had gone to hell, but she couldn’t demote everybody on the force—and she had
tried everything else. They would not obey her: because she was a woman, yes
(and damn the day she had decided to be anything more) ... but also because she
had taken the place that rightfully belonged to Man tagnes. And because it had
been the Queen’s idea. They believed she was the Queen’s puppet; and how could
she prove they were wrong, when Arienrhod’s strings had trapped her like
spiderweb, held her suspended here between heaven and hell, draining away her
will to continue?

“What is
it, KerlaTinde?” unable to keep the sharpness out of her own voice.

“The other
officers have asked me to speak for them, ma’am.” The word was heavy with
incongruity. “We want an end to enforced patrol duty by officers here in the
city. We feel that the duty belongs to the patrolmen; it’s damaging to the
prestige of an officer to be forced to harass citizens in the street.”

“You’d
rather let the citizens harass each other?” She frowned, too easily, leaning
forward. “What important duty do you feel you should be attending to instead?”

“Attending
to our designated duties! We don’t have time enough to get through all the file
work as it is, without patrolling as well.” His broad face matched her, frown
for frown. He looked pointedly at the stacks of tape containers on her desk.

“I know,
KerlaTinde,” following his gaze. “I’ve cut out every piece of red tape I can.”
And you should see the scars Hovanesse put
on me for it
. “I know the computer crapping out made it all ten times
worse; but damn it, our main job here is still protecting the Hedge’s citizens,
and it has to be done.”

“Then give
us something worth doing for once!” KerlaTinde swept his hand across the
nonexistent view from her window. “Not picking up drunks out of the gutter. Let
us go after the big-time criminals, get some convictions that would mean
something.”

“You’ll
never get those convictions. It’s a waste of time.” Gods
, am I really saying that? Am I really the one, the same one, who stood
there where he’s standing and said what he’s saying to me?
She wadded an
empty iesta packet into a painful ball below the desk edge.
No ... I’m not the same one
. But it was
true, what she had just said to him ...

As soon as
she became Commander, she had tried to crack down on the big operators she knew
were controlling networks of interplanetary vice from right here in Carbuncle.
But they had slipped through her fingers like water. Any illegal activity that
they might conceivably be caught in here on Tiamat turned out to be technically
under the control of a citizen of this world. And the Winters were under the
Queen’s law; she couldn’t touch them without the Queen’s permission.

“Commander
LiouxSked didn’t think that way.”

The hell he didn’t
. But there was no point in saying it. Had
LiouxSked faced the same infuriating impasse—or had Arienrhod restructured
Carbuncle society just for her? She couldn’t explain it to KerlaTinde, or any
of the rest, anyway; they already knew she was in the Queen’s pocket, and
nothing she could say would ever make any difference. “You’re patrolling the
Street for a good reason, KerlaTinde; you know crimes of violence have
soared”—she saw Arienrhod’s hand behind that, too; saw herself taking the blame
for it in KerlaTinde’s eyes—”as we near the final departure. And we won’t be
getting any more replacements. So you’ll go on patrolling the Street until I
tell you to stop; until the last ship is ready to lift off this planet.”

“Chief
Inspector Mantagnes isn’t—”

“Mantagnes
isn’t Commander, damn it! I am!” her voice slipped away from her. “And my
orders stand. Now get out of my office, Captain, before I make it Lieutenant.”

KerlaTinde
retreated, his olive skin darkening with indignation. The door shut her off
from one more unresolved confrontation, one more stupid mistake.

No wonder they hate me
. Hating herself, she stared at the
opacity of the polarized windows, her only shield against the radiation of
hostility from the station beyond. The windows reflected her own image faintly,
like a hologrammic transmission ghost, a flawed recreation of a false reality.
There was no Jerusha, no woman, no solid human flesh, any more: only a
nerve-racked, knife-tongued harridan with paranoid delusions. Who the hell was
she kidding? It was her own fault, she couldn’t handle the job, she was a failure
... an inferior being, weak, overemotional, female. She leaned back in her
chair, looking down along her body, knowing the truth that even the heavy
uniform could never fully conceal. And she didn’t even have the guts to admit
that it was her own fault, not some wild plot of the Queen’s. No wonder she was
a laughingstock.

And yet—she
had
seen the Queen’s face on a
Summer
girl. She
had
seen the Queen’s fury at the girl’s loss. And she
had
seen LiouxSked crawling in his own filth—for no conceivable
reason, if not for Arienrhod’s revenge. She wasn’t losing her mind! The Queen
was systematically taking it away from her.

But there
was nothing she could do about it; nothing. She had tried everything, but there
was no escape—only the awareness that her career, her future, her faith in her
own ability were inexorably bleeding away. Her career was being ruined, the
record of her command would be one long list of failures and complaints. The
end of their stay on Tiamat would mark the end of everything she had worked
toward or ever wanted. Arienrhod was destroying her, too, not swiftly, not like
LiouxSked—but in a way that would let her perceive every agonizing nuance of
her own destruction.

And best of
all, Arienrhod must have realized that she would stay on, keep defying her own
destiny—as she had always done, all her life. Because to quit now and leave
Tiamat, give up her position, would be to admit that it had all been futile. It
would all be futile yet, when they finished with this world; but in the
meantime even this hellish charade of her dream was better than a life with no
dream at all.

She
couldn’t strike back at the Queen, hadn’t been able to cause her even the
smallest inconvenience in return. Accidentally she had foiled one plot by
Arienrhod to keep Winter in power. But it hadn’t given her even a moment’s
satisfaction, the gods knew—and since then she had turned up no clue about what
new webs the Queen might be weaving. There was no doubt in her mind that there
would be another plan ... but more than enough doubt that this time the
Hegemony, in the person of herself, would be able to stop it. And that failure
would be the crowning act in her own rum.

But there
was still time. The contest wasn’t over yet, she had to turn herself around ...
“Are you listening, bitch? I’ll get you yet; by the Bastard Boatman, I swear
it! I won’t break, you can’t destroy me before I—”

The door
opened again, batting the words back at her; a patrolman entered, realizing
with one swift look around that she was alone. He set another stack of
cassettes on her desk with a sidelong glance.

“Well, what
are you staring at?”

He saluted
and left.

With another choice one for the
wardroom gossips.
Her resolution crumbled. How do you
really know; how can you tell if you’ve really lost your
mind
...
?
She
reached past the terminal toward the new pile of records, but her hand closed
over a solitary printed sheet lying half-pinned beneath them. She pulled it
free, read one line: LIST OF GRIEVANCES. She crushed the paper between her
hands.
Who put it there? Who?

The
intercom began to chime; she hit the go-ahead mutely, not trusting her voice.

“Radiophone
call from the outback, Commander. Somebody named Kennet or something. Should I
put it through?”

Ngenet?
Gods, she couldn’t talk to him now,
not like this.
Why the hell does he pick
the worst times, why does he even bother any more?

“And
Inspector Mantagnes is here to see you.”

“Put the
call on my line.”
But what will I say?
What?
“And tell Mantagnes to—” She clenched her teeth. “Tell him to wait.”

She heard
storm static crackle from the speaker, and the familiar distortion of a
familiar voice. “Hello? Hello, Jerusha—”

“Yes,
Miroe!” Remembering with a sudden rush of pleasure what it was like to hear a
human being speak to her willingly, gladly ... realizing suddenly how much more
than simple humanity his friendship gave her. “Gods, it’s good to hear from you
again.” She was smiling, actually smiling.

“Can’t hear
you ... reception’s lousy! How’d you ... come out to the plantation again ...
day or so? ... of a long time since we’ve had a visit!”

“I can’t,
Miroe.” How long had it been? Months, since she had accepted an invitation,
even spoken to him—months since she had spent a day or an hour selfishly on
something that made her smile. She couldn’t, she couldn’t afford to.

“What?”

“I said,
I—I ...” She saw herself reflected in the wall, the face of a jailer, the face
of a prisoner in a cell. Panic touched her with a dun ringer. “Yes! Yes, I’ll
come. I’ll come tonight.”

“All right,
suckers. You’re on your own again.” Tor moved back, hoping for sinuous grace,
hoping against hope. Inadvertently revealing more flesh than she had intended
to, she bowed her way out of the eerily glowing obstacle course. Hologrammic
coin ships and a meteor swarm tangled intangibly in the golden crocheted cap
that held her midnight wig under control. The drapery of her silken overalls
flashed the blue flame-color of a welding torch; the expanses of skin they left
uncovered were a deathly lavender against the darkness.