The Snow Queen (53 page)

He crawled
out from under the pile of skins and blankets, trudged to the front of the
sledge and leaned down to lift the runners and the fragile underside clear.
Moon threw her weight against the rear of it, and together they dragged it up
the endless slope. He watched the sun-cast giants that mimicked their stumbling
progress, trying to ignore the bands of red-hot metal tightening in his
chest—and the awareness that his weakness forced a girl to do all the heavy
work; the awareness that she did it quite adequately alone, and without
complaint.

They
reached the crest of the hill, the snowy downslope, at last. He let out the
breath he had been holding, and the spasm of deep coughing he had held in with
it. He felt Moon come up beside him, pulling him back to his seat on the
sledge.

“How much
longer, BZ?” She frowned, pulling furs up under his chin again like a fretful
nanny. She had no herbal medicines now, and he knew that she knew the cough was
worse again.

He smiled
briefly, shook his head. “Soon. Maybe another day, we’ll be there.”
The star port Salvation. Heaven
. He
didn’t admit that he couldn’t remember now whether it had been five or six days
that they had been journeying. He never let himself believe that it had been
too long, or that his calculations might be wrong.

“I think we
should make camp down there.” Moon pointed; he saw her shiver as an ice-barbed
lash of wind struck the spine of the hill. “The suns are setting already.” She
looked out across the infinity of hills falling toward the distant sea, looked
up into the deepening indigo sky. “It’s getting too cold for you to travel.” He
heard her sudden indrawn breath, louder than the wind’s sigh. “BZ!”

He looked
up, following her hand, not knowing what he expected, but only that it was not
what he found.

Out of the
blue-black zenith stars were falling. But not the broken-glass stars of this
winter world—these were the stars that shone in dreams, stars that a man would
die for, the stars of empire, grandeur, glory ... the impossible made real.

“What—what
are they?” He heard in Moon’s voice the awe and the dread of countless natives
on seven separate worlds down through a millennium, as they witnessed what she
was witnessing now.

The five
starships grew against the sky with every heartbeat, the harmonies of color and
intensity shifting and reordering as parallaxes changed, building complexity on
complexity like light poured through prisms of flowing water. He watched the
five ships slowly realigning, moving into a cross pattern; saw the
lightning-play of their cold fire spreading, coalescing, into one immense star,
the sign of the Hegemony. The colors blazed with a music he could almost hear,
filling the sky with all the hues, all the impossible permutations of an
aurora-filled night sky on his homeworld ...

“The Prime
Minister? Is it the Prime Minister?” Moon’s words came to him muffled by her
protective face mask, and her upraised hand.

He
swallowed, and swallowed again, unable to answer.

“They’re
ships!” She went on answering her own questions. “They’re only ships. How can
they be real, and be so beautiful?”

“They’re
Kharemoughi.” He might have said “the Empire”; he might have said “gods.” He
did not say that they were only coin ships wrapped in cloaks of hologrammic
projection to astound a subject world. He looked back at her, glory blind, and
took her smile at face value.

“Are they?”
She touched his cheek, turned back to the sky as the formation split apart
again, the flames died away and embers fell to earth ... behind the hills,
scarcely two ridges away. “Look!” She shook off her wonder. “That must be the
star port BZ, we’re almost there. We could reach it tonight.” Frost clouds
feathered around her cheeks. “We’re on time!”

“Yes.” He
took a deep breath. “Plenty of time. Thank the gods.” He watched the last of
the ships snuff out behind the snowy hills. Tonight ... “There’s no need to
push on tonight. One more day won’t matter. Tomorrow is soon enough.”

She glanced
at him, surprised. “It’s only a couple of hours. It’s as easy as if I set up
camp.”

He
shrugged, still looking into the distance. “Maybe so.” He began to cough,
smothered it behind his hand.

She put a mitten
to his forehead, as though she were feeling for a fever. “The sooner you see a
healer—a medic—the better,” firmly.

“Yes,
Nanny.”

She poked
him. He grinned, eagerness coming back into him, as she started the power unit.
The snow skimmer slipped quietly over the ridge and into the valley, blotting
out even the afterglow of the ships’ landing. Hours ... only hours, until he
would rejoin the living, regain the life he had almost lost forever, the only
life worth living. Gods, yes, he wanted to reach the star port tonight!

Then why
had he said “tomorrow” to her?
Tomorrow
is soon enough
. He moved his hands under the blankets, shifting Blodwed’s
caged pets that shared the warmth of his body—only two of them now. The green
bird had died, three or four nights ago. In the morning they had made a small
grave in the crusted snow.
There but for
you go
I ....
He had spoken those words aloud to
her, kneeling in the snow beneath the silent witness of heaven.

And he had
spoken them with his eyes at every new dawn’s light, when he woke to find
himself a free man, and see her beside him in the bubble tent—close enough to
touch, but never touching, since that one night. He had watched her unguarded
sleep, the dreams that moved across her face ... the fair face and the snowy
tumbled hair, the wild, unnatural paleness of her, more familiar to him now
than his own darkness, suddenly grown beautiful and right. In his mind he had
held her again, kissed her lips to wake her to the day ... and in this timeless
wilderness he was free in a way that he had never been free, from his past and
his future, the rigid codes that defined his existence. Here he drifted
formlessly, an embryo, and he felt no shame at his yearning for a barbarian
girl with eyes like mist and agate.

And he had
seen her wake from troubled dreams to his imaginary kiss, lie looking back at
him with a drowsy smile. He had seen the awareness fill her eyes, knew the
hesitant answering desire that filled her, too. But only his eyes had asked,
and only her eyes had answered him. And now there would never be one more
morning ...

They
crested a final hill, cold and aching, and the star port muted dawn-glow opened
out before them like a midnight sun rising. The low dome of the subterranean
complex was a vast bruise on the seaward plain, almost a city in its own right;
unearthly light suffused its curving surface. There was no sign now of the
starships’ landing: the dome’s impervious surface was unbroken by any opening.
Away on the sea’s horizon he saw the winking shell-form of unsleeping
Carbuncle.

Gundhalinu
sighed, easing the painful tightness in his chest. Moon sat silently behind the
controls; he wondered whether awe at the sight of the first star port she had
ever seen had put her into stasis-until he remembered that it was not her first
star port Her hand reached out suddenly and pressed his shoulder, in a gesture
that asked reassurance more than offered it. He lifted his own hand to cover
hers; found that it would not close. He dropped it again. “Don’t worry,”
woodenly, inadequately. “We’d better angle left, make the approach toward the
main entrance. Security will be upped a mag for the state visit—I don’t want to
be a casualty to caution.”

She obeyed,
still without answering him. Caught in his own sudden inability to reach her,
to reassure her or even himself, he watched the dome grow ahead.

They were
still a hundred meters out from the maIN surface entrance when light flooded
around them and a disembodied voice ordered them to a halt. Four men wearing
the blue uniform he’d almost forgotten the look of approached cautiously; he
knew that more were observing the snow skimmer from inside. The face shields on
their helmets were down; he couldn’t recognize any of them. But the knowledge
that they were his own people did not comfort or reassure him. Instead he sat
frozen with guilty unease, as though he had been a criminal and not a victim.

“You’re
trespassing in a restricted area.” He recognized a sergeant’s insignia, but not
the voice. “Clear out, Mother lovers, and if you brought more of your thieving
clan along, take ‘em with you, before we use you for target practice.”

Gundhalinu
stiffened. “Who the hell taught you procedure, Sergeant?”

The
sergeant drew back in mock surprise. “Who the hell wants to know?” He gestured
with his hand. Two of his men closed in around Moon, the third dragged
Gundhalinu up from his place on the sledge. His legs gave way and he sat down
unceremoniously in the snow.

“Leave him
alone, damn you!”

“Get your
hands off her!” His own angry protest overran Moon’s as she started toward him
and the two men jerked her back. He pushed down his hood, peeled off the
scratchy weather mask that disguised his face. He spoke deliberately in
Klostan, the primary language of Newhaven: “I tell you ‘who wants to know,” Sergeant.
Police Inspector Gundhalinu wants to know.”

The
sergeant pushed back his helmet shield, staring. “Ye gods—”

“Gundhalinu’s
dead!” The third patrolman looked down into his face. “Millennium come, it is
him!”

Moon pulled
free, came forward and helped him up. Gundhalinu brushed off his leggings,
straightened with slow dignity. “The reports of my death were premature.” He
put his arm around her, leaning heavily on her shoulder.

“Inspector.”
The sergeant jerked to attention. Gundhalinu put a name to his face,
TessraBarde. “We thought the bandits got you, sir. Give him a hand there—”

“I’m fine.”
Gundhalinu shook his head as Moon’s grip lightened protectively, defensively,
refusing to separate herself from him. “I’m just fine now,” suddenly oblivious
to cold and fatigue, warm and strong with relief.

“Welcome
back, Inspector! You made it just in time.” One of the men gripped his hand,
peered curiously at Moon: Gundhalinu felt implications forming. “Who’s your
Mother loving friend?”

“It’s good
to be back; you can’t imagine how good.” He glanced at Moon’s unmasked face,
saw the frightened question on it, and understood at last that a part of her
silent uncertainty had centered on him. He smiled a promise, felt her grip on
him ease. “My companion was a prisoner along with me. And before I say anything
more about either of us—” postponing the moment when he knew he would have to
lie, “we could use a hot meal and a chance to sit down.” He coughed rac kingly
making his point.

“Inspector,
as you know, sir—” he heard TessraBarde’s emphasis, “the, uh, locals aren’t
permitted in the complex.”

“By all the
gods, Sergeant.”“ He had no patience left. “If Winter bandits weren’t getting
into the goddamn complex I wouldn’t be standing here half-dead! And if it
wasn’t for this woman I wouldn’t be standing here at all.” He started toward
the tunnel entrance, Moon supporting him. “Bring our sledge.”

There were
no more objections.

Jerusha
rubbed her eyes, stifled a yawn with a quick shifting of her hand. The drone of
half a hundred conversations rolled over and around her, rose to the ceiling
and were deflected back in a numbing assault. She had been awake for twenty
hours already today, after another night of broken sleep; even this position of
honor, seated at the head table in the hall among the demigods of the Hegemonic
Assembly, had turned into just one more test of endurance. By the shipboard
time of the Prime Minister and the Assembly, this was the middle of the day and
not the middle of the night; and so it became for everyone delegated to welcome
them as well.

She had
shaken hands with Prime Minister Ashwini himself tonight, wearing the dress
uniform of a Commander of Police, weighted down by enough glorious braid and
brass to give the sun competition. Or so she had thought, until she had seen
his own state garments, gem-brocaded, exquisitely tailored to show every line
of his still-youthful body .... How old was he, in real time? Four hundred?
Five hundred? Even Arienrhod must feel a jealous twinge at the sight of all he
represented. (It filled her with secret pleasure that Arienrhod was not
permitted to attend this banquet.) Prime Minister for life, he had succeeded
his father as a Hegemonic showpiece in the centuries after Kharemough’s dreams
of dominating its fellow worlds had been laid low by the ultimate indifference
of galactic space-time. He had greeted her with polite gallantry, in which she
had read his private incredulity at finding her to be a woman. Chief Justice
Hovanesse was seated beside him now, but she was almost indifferent to the sort
of reports he was hearing about her.

A servo
eased in beside her, deftly removed the sixth or seventh untouched course of
her meal and put down another in front of her. She sipped at her tea, watching
the oils eddy on its steaming reddish-black surface. It had steeped until the
spoon must be ready to dissolve, and she hoped that it would be enough to keep
her awake.

“Be we
keeping you from an honest night’s sleep, Commander?”