The Snow Queen (38 page)

“Are you
sorry? Sorry you let it happen—let me become Star buck? Haven’t I done the
job?” He was not defiant any more.

“No, I’m
not sorry. It was inevitable.”
But I am
sorry that it was inevitable ...
She found a smile, an answer for the
insecure boy who had stolen away his voice. “And you have done very well.”
Too well.
“Take
off your mask, Starbuck.”

He reached
up and pulled the black helmet off, held it under his arm. She smiled at the
blaze of hair spilling out, the fair face still the same, fresh and youthful
... no, not really the same. Not any more. Not any more than her own was. Her
eyes stopped smiling behind her smile; she watched his smile fade in response.
They looked at each other for a space of time, silently.

He broke
free at last; stretched, struck a pose with feline self awareness. “You mind if
I sit? It’s been a long day.”

“By all
means, sit, then. I’m sure it must be enervating to wallow in depravity day
after day as diligently as you do.”

He frowned
as he settled into one of the matched wing-form chairs, across the intimate
gulf between desk and doorway, and himself and her. “It’s boring.” He leaned
forward suddenly, reaching across the space with his voice. “Every minute seems
like a year, it bores the hell out of me when I’m away from you.” He sat back
again, restlessly, hopelessly, fingering the off worlder medal that dangled in
the silken gap of his half-open shirt.

“You
shouldn’t find it boring to make trouble for the Blues—for the woman who lost
Moon for us both.” She forced her tone to stay businesslike, shaping her
emotion into a weapon to punish ... whom?

He
shrugged. “I’d enjoy it more if I could see some results. She’s still on top.”

“Of course
she is. And she’ll stay there to the bitter, bitter end. And every day of what
should have been sweet victory she’ll spend walking barefoot over broken glass
... Stay here in the palace tomorrow, and I’ll let you watch her.”

“No.” He
looked down at his feet abruptly. She saw with some surprise that his face
burned. “No. I don’t want to see it, after all.” His hands felt along his
studded belt for something that wasn’t there, had not been there for a long
time.

“Whatever
you want. If you even know what you want,” half critical, half concerned. But
he was unresponsive, and so she went on, “I must say PalaThion’s held together
more stubbornly than I’d expected. Brittle as she is, I thought shed be showing
deeper fractures by now. She must be getting support from somewhere.”

“Gundhalinu.
One of the inspectors. The others hate him for it; but he doesn’t give a damn,
because he thinks he’s better than they are.”

“Gundhalinu?
Oh, yes ...” Arienrhod glanced down, at the note recorder. “I’ll keep that in
mind. And there’s another off worlder Ngenet is his name; he has an outback
plantation down along the coast. She’s been out to visit him there, I
understand. A friendship with questionable roots ...” She smoothed her hair,
gazing at the mural behind Starbuck’s head, the white blackness of a winter
storm roaring down out of the ice-crowned peaks, obliterating the valley and the
world around a solitary Winter holding. “His plantation has never been
harvested, has it?”

Starbuck
straightened up in his chair. “No. He’s an off worlder I thought we couldn’t,
unless he—”

“That’s
right. And I undertand that he strictly forbids it; he’s hostile to the whole
idea. Now what would happen, I wonder, if you hunted his preserve, and
PalaThion couldn’t punish you?”

He laughed,
none of the old reluctance showing now. “A good Hunt. And the end of an
affair?”

“All in a
day’s work.” She smiled. “The final Hunt will net us some souls.”

“The final
Hunt ...” Starbuck leaned into a wing of the chair back, playing with his
fingers. “You know, I heard something interesting on the Street. I heard the
Source had a midnight visitor a few nights back. I heard it was you. And the
word is that maybe you’re not ready to see the end of Winter come.” He glanced
up. “How’s my hearing?”

“Excellent.”
She nodded, listening to the silence keep them company. Surprised, yes—but only
a little. She knew his sources of information, that he used Persipone to use
Herne
. She even approved
of his resourcefulness. It only surprised her a little that her intentions were
quite so obvious to them all. She would have to keep closer watch on Persipone.

“Well?”
Starbuck pressed his knees with his fists. “Were you going to tell me about it?
Or were you just going to let me go on thinking we were both going into the sea
together at the next Festival?”

“Oh, I
would have told you—eventually. I just rather enjoyed hearing you swear to me
that you couldn’t, wouldn’t, live without me ... my dearest love.” She stopped
his anger with three words that came unexpectedly from her heart.

He stood
up, came across the room and around the silver-edged curve of desk to her. But
she put up her hands, holding him back with quiet insistence. “Hear me first.
Since you’ve asked, then I want you to know. I have no intention of going
meekly to the sacrifice, and seeing all that I’ve struggled to make of this
world thrown into the sea after me. I never had. This time, by all the gods who
never belonged here, this world is not going to sink back into ignorance and
stagnation when the off worlders go!”

“What can
you do to stop it? When the off worlders go, we lose our support, our base of
power.” It pleased her to hear his unconscious pledge of allegiance. “They’ll
see to it that we do. And then we can’t hold back Summer, any more than we can
hold back the seasons. It’ll be then world again.”

“You’re brainwashed.”
She shook her head, gestured with a ring heavy hand at the city beyond the
walls. “The Summers will gather here in the city for the Festival—here on our
ground. All we need is something that will take them unawares ... like an
epidemic. One that we Winters are fortunately immune to, thanks to the miracle
of off world medicine.”

Starbuck’s
face twisted. “You mean ... you could do that? Would—?”

“Yes, and
yes! Are you still so bound to those ignorant, superstitious barbarians that
you aren’t willing to sacrifice a few of them for the future of this world?
They play right into the hands of the off worlders there’s a conspiracy between
them to oppress us-Winter—the people who want to make this world a free partner
in the Hegemony. And they’ve succeeded, for a millennium! Do you want them to
go on succeeding, forever? Isn’t it time we had our turn?”

“Yes! But—”

“But
nothing. Offworlders, Summers—what have they ever done for you, either of them,
but betray you, abandon you?” She watched the words work in the dark corners of
his soul that she had probed so thoroughly.

“Nothing.”
His mouth was like a knife slash. “You’re right ... they deserve it, for what
they’ve—done.” His hands closed over his belt, like claws sinking into flesh.
“But how can you arrange a thing like that, without the Blues finding it out?”

“The Source
will handle it. He’s arranged other accidents of fate for me; even one that
happened to the last Commander of Police.” She watched Starbuck’s eyes widen.
“This is on a somewhat larger scale; but then, for the possession of your take
from this final Hunt, I’m sure he’ll see that the task is done efficiently.
He’s an honorable man, after his fashion.”

“But it’ll
have to happen before the final ships go. Won’t the Blues still try—”

“With the
Prime Minister here, and the Gate closing? They’ll run; they’ll leave us in
chaos, thinking that without them we’ll end up in the sea anyway. I know them
... I’ve studied them for a century and a half.”

He let his
resistance out in a sigh. “You know them better than they know themselves.”

“I know
everyone that way.” She rose from her chair, letting his arms come around her
at last. “Even you.”

“Especially
me.” He breathed the words against her ear, kissing her neck, her throat.
“Arienrhod ... you have my body; I’d give you my soul if you’d take it.”

She touched
a button on the desk, opening a door into a more appropriate room. Thinking,
with sorrow
, I already have, my love
.

“Got warm
bodies registering down there someplace, Inspector.” The pilot, TierPardee,
roused from his usual truculent silence with rare animation. “Looks right for
humans. Along that rift to the left; there’s bush for cover.”

“Using any
power?” Gundhalinu stuck the Old Empire novel into a pocket of his heavy coat,
leaned forward in his seat, the patrol craft shoulder harness pressing the side
of his throat.
At last, some action ...
He peered out through the windshield, scanning with inadequate human eyes for a
trace of what their all-seeing equipment saw. They had been tracking this party
of thieves for a day and a half after the raid on the star port The trail had
been muddled at the start, but it had been steadily getting fresher. The list
of things missing included a crate containing a portable heavy-duty beamer that
belonged to the police; he wondered how in hell they had managed to get access
to that. The nomads were not usually well armed, which was why their raids
depended on stealth and avoided confrontation. But they were as pitiless and
unsubtle as the stark black-and-white land that sheltered them, and they had
killed almost casually the handful of off worlders who had gotten in their way.
He meant to make sure this acquisition didn’t change their method of operation.

He glanced
down at the readout on the panel again, to make his own assessment, as
TierPardee sang out, “Yes, sir! We’ve finally nailed ‘em, Inspector, they’ve
got snow skimmers down there.” TierPardee laughed gleefully. “I’ll take us in
low and scare the piss out of them; ought to be no trouble picking the Mother lovers
off after that, right, sir?”

Gundhalinu
opened his mouth to make a skeptical response just as his eyes found the next
readout, just as it suddenly glared red-red warning—”Get us the hell out of
here now!”

He reached
across TierPardee’s amazed and sluggish body, jerked the control bar back and
around into a steeply climbing turn. He felt the bar tremble and fight his
control. “Come
on
...”

“Inspector,
what the—” TierPardee never finished it, as the hidden bolt of directed energy
caught them from below and punched them out of the sky.

Gundhalinu
had a brief, whorled image of black-white-blue photo printed indelibly on his
brain; giddy free fall spun him like a lottery wheel before the craft’s
stabilizers reintegrated and stopped their nightmare tumbling. But not their
fall—they were dead in the air, dropping down like a stone through a soundless
dive that would end with them dead on the ground. His hand stretched
instinctively to press the restart button; he pushed it again and again, his
numbed brain acknowledging at last the reason why there was no response: the
beamer had slagged the shielding on the power unit, and there was nothing he
could do. Nothing—TierPardee sat gaping like a plastic dummy, making a sound
that at first he mistook for laughter. The sky disappeared, he saw the rumpled
cloud-surface of the snow and the jutting black fangs of the naked cliff leap
up to meet them ...

They hit
the snow before they hit the cliff, and that was all that saved them. The snow
plowed up in a cushion of blinding white, absorbing the impact that still threw
him forward so hard his helmet warped the pliant windshield.

For a long
time he lay without moving, doubled over in the embrace of the harness;
listening to bells, unable to focus his eyes or even make a sound. Knowing that
there was something important he must say, must warn—but it wouldn’t take form
in his mouth or even his mind. The cabin felt hot to him, which struck him as
strange because they were buried in snow. Buried. Buried. Dead and . ? He shut
his eyes. Something stank. His eyes hurt ... The air. The air was going bad,
smelled like buried—like burning.

His eyes
watered; he opened them again. Burning insulation. That was it. The avalanche
of snow was slushing, slipping down outside the windows. ““Pardee. Overload.
Gedoud.” The words ware unintelligible even to him. He shook TierPardee, but
the patrolman’s eyes stayed shut, and he hung forward across the straps
unmoving. Gundhalinu struggled with his own harness latch, finally set himself
free. He tried the door; it was still blocked shut by snow. He beat against it
with his fist, uselessly, while every blow fed back through his bones into his
throbbing head. At last he wedged himself sideways and shoved with his feet,
threw all his returning strength and his fear into it. The door began to give,
a centimeter at a time, until at last it sprang upward on its own, half dumping
him out into the snow.

He landed
on his knees in a puddle of slush, shocked by the sudden assault on his aching
body of painful heat and cold. He pulled himself up the side of the craft,
forcing his rubber legs to lock and support him, separating the sinister heat
of the power unit going critical from the icy embrace of the wind. He had to
get TierPardee out and as far away as he could before the patroller turned into
a star.