The Snow Queen (60 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
Gods, he really thinks it’s the Queen.
Tor shook her head.
But a trace
of sympathy crept into the mock-Queen’s eyes, and she said quietly, “If there’s
ever—anything else I can give you ...”
Herne
glanced down at his atrophying legs. “No human being can give me that.”
“Well,
look, if you’re going to the palace you can’t go looking like a refugee.” Tor
pointed. “Come with me, I’ll find you some royal rags, or at least something
that’ll cover up those.”
“Moon, you
can’t go to the palace! I forbid it.” Gundhalinu blocked her way as she turned,
desperately officious.
“BZ, I have
to. I have to,” undaunted.
“You’re
wasting your time; you’re risking your—soul, if you go there. He’s gone rotten,
let him go, forget about him!” Gundhalinu 1 held out his hands to her. “Just
this once listen to me! You’re obsessed by a dream, a nightmare—wake up, for
gods’ sakes! Believe me, I’m not asking this out of selfishness, Moon. You’re
all I care about; your safety ...”
She shook
her head, looking away. “Don’t try to stop me, BZ. Bell cause you can’t.” She
went past him, and he made no move to hold it her. Tor led her out of the room.
Gundhalinu
stood looking after her, sealing his coat against a sudden chill; feeling
his skull, with no strength to turn back and face them.
“You know
the truth about her, don’t you?” Herne’s voice pulled at him. “You know they’re
the same, Arienrhod and her.”
“They’re
not the same!” Gundhalinu turned back, stung by his own guilty knowledge.
Herne
smiled, believing the answer his eyes gave away. “That’s I what I figured.
She’s the Queen’s clone, it’s the only thing she could be’”
“Are you
sure?” He asked the question compulsively, not wanting to, not even meaning to.
who’s sure. But I’m I sure enough. It’s not her daughter—she never misses
taking the water of life. And she’d never let a man get that hold on her.”
“It makes
you—sterile?” Gundhalinu blinked, taken by surprise.
“While you
use it ... maybe forever, after a hundred and fifty years. Who knows? That’s a
joke, isn’t it? It makes you slow to heal, too. It’s even killed a few people.”
Herne chuckled, pleased at the idea. “Makes some people go a little crazy too,
“personality distortion’ or some crap like that. That’s what the whiners claim,
anyhow—the have-nots. It’s the power that warps you, not the drug.
How’s it feel
to be a have-not, Gundhalinu-
eshskrad
?”
Gundhalinu
ignored him, an image of Sparks Dawntreader in a helmet of spines suddenly
blotting out his sight. He started forward. “Give me the control box, Herne.
You aren’t sending Moon into that snake pit
Herne moved
slightly, and there was a stunner in his hand. “Hold it, Blue. Suppose you just
stand up against the wall, unless you really want what you’re asking for.”
Gundhalinu
backed away again, his own forgotten stunner weighing like lead on his hip,
under his coat. He leaned against the wall, coughed with grueling helplessness
until his head swam. “Do you mind ... if I sit?” He slid down the wall without
waiting for an answer, sat on the floor.
“You ought
to see a medic,” Herne said unsympathetically. “When a Tech sits on the floor
he’s as good as dead.”
“I can’t.”
Gundhalinu pulled open his coat again, abruptly too hot.
Not until this is finished
.
“You mean they’re
hunting you too.” A statement, not a question. “All your old true-Blue buddies.
You’re on the run with a proscribed Mother lover, you don’t have a friend in
the world; you’ve thrown away your job and your position and dragged your
highborn honor in the gutters. And all for love.”
Gundhalinu
looked up, his face burning, opened his mouth.
“I can two
and two add.” Herne grinned, dripping vitriol. “I’m a Kharemoughi.” He shook
his head, leaning back on an elbow. “She’s really sticking it to you, boy ...
What did she promise you? Her body?”
“Nothing,
mekru
!”
“Nothing?”
Herne leered. “You’re a bigger ass than I thought.”
“Anything
that’s happened to me I’ve done to myself.” Gundhalinu sat up straighter,
struggling against his fury, against the galling truth that roused it. “It was
my decision; I accept the consequences of a rational act.”
Heme burst
out laughing. “Sure, she can make you believe that! That’s her power. She could
make you believe you can breathe vacuum. It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it,
you rational brain wipe-You want her so much nothing else matters; you could
have her under your thumb, a deportee. But instead you’re helping her find
another lover! Gods, that’s Arienrhod down to the ground. And they want the
same man; the only one she’ll ever want enough to make her hate herself. The
ultimate incest. If that isn’t enough proof they’re the same ... if that isn’t
the hell of it.” He sat forward, his fingers lacing in the mesh of his caged
legs, his head down.
Gundhalinu
felt disgust rise in his throat. “That’s what I’d expect of you—that you’d drag
everything down to your own level, and smear it with filth. You’re incapable of
anything better; of even understanding what it is you degrade and destroy.”
“How would
you know?” Herne raised his head.
Gundhalinu
frowned. “Because you can’t see why I want to help Moon more than I want to
help myself. Because you can’t feel what it is about her—” He closed his eyes,
looking back. “Yes, she made me love her. But she didn’t mean to. She took by
giving ... and that makes all the difference.”
Herne held
up the control box, a challenge. “Why do you think I’m giving her this?”
“Revenge.”
Herne
looked down again, without an answer.
“No clone
ever made is a perfect image of the original. Even identical twins aren’t the
same, and they’re not created by a middleman. The control in cloning isn’t
nearly that precise, all you ever have is an imperfect recreation.”
“A flawed
copy,” Herne said harshly.
“Yes.”
Gundhalinu pressed his mouth together. “But why couldn’t it be better for the
things that were changed—lost, or gained, inadvertently?”
Herne
seemed to consider the possibility. “Maybe ...” He scratched his jaw. “If
you’re so sure Moon’s not the same, why don’t you tell her the truth?”
Gundhalinu
shook his head. “I tried to.” He looked down at his wrists, traced the scarring
with unresponsive fingers. “How can I tell her a thing like that?”
“Failed-suicide,”
Herne whispered.
Gundhalinu
stiffened, pushed up onto his knees. But then he saw that Herne was not trying
to bait him.
“Did she
drive you to that?” with bald curiosity, without rancor. Herne plucked at his
braces like a harpist.
“No.”
Gundhalinu shook his head, sinking back again. “She made me see that there
might be some reason to go on living.” It struck him as strange that it did not
seem stranger to be telling this to an Unclassified, sitting on the floor in a
brothel. “All my life I never imagined it was possible to survive without the
armor of one’s honor intact. And yet, here I am—” not quite a laugh, “—naked to
the universe. And it hurts like hell ... but maybe that’s only because now I
feel everything more clearly.”
And I
don’t know yet whether I want it like this or not.
“You’ll get
used to it,” Herne said sourly. “You know, I never used to be able to figure
that at all—how you Techs swallowed poison any time life gave you a kick in the
butt. You’d be dead a hundred times over if you’d been through my life—a
thousand tunes!”
“You’re
right.” Gundhalinu cringed at the idea of being trapped inside Herne’s mind.
“Gods, that would be a fate worse than death.”
Herne
looked at him with bleak disgust, with the unrelenting hatred of half his
world’s people, until he felt his brittle arrogance crumble, and his gaze
broke. “Yes. “Death before dishonor’ is a rich man’s privilege. Just like the
water of life ...”
But nobody really owns
Life, or Death.
“I used to
think there was nothing more important to me than my life, there was
nothing
that could ever make me understand weaklings like
you who’d throw it away. Survival was all that was important, it didn’t matter
how you survived—”
“Was?”
Gundhalinu rested his head against the wall, catching the past tense. His
tongue absently explored the place where a tooth had been. He followed Herne’s
glance down the exoskeleton that encased his lower body, realizing all that it
implied the loss of—all that had made Herne a man in his own eyes, in the eyes
of the world he belonged to. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. You could
get that fixed on Kharemough.”
“After five
years?” Herne’s voice rose, ready with all the arguments, all the answers he
must have gone over and over endlessly in his own mind. “Nobody has that kind
of money. I sure as hell don’t I don’t even have enough to get off this goddamn
spitball!”
“Go to the
authorities. They aren’t going to leave any off worlder behind who doesn’t want
to stay.”
“Yeah,
sure.” Herne pulled a bottle out from under his bed, un stoppered it and drank
without offering to share it. “You have any idea, Blue, of how many outstanding
charges I got against me back home? And a lot of other places. If you think I’m
going to sweat blood in some penal colony for the rest of my life, you’re
crazy.” He drank again, deeply.
“Then it
doesn’t look like you’ve got much in the way of open options.”
And you probably don’t deserve any
. But
he felt an unexpected prick of empathy.
Sainted
ancestors—what if I had been born in his body, and he in mine ...
“I’m—sorry.”
“Are you.”
Herne wiped his mouth. “What about you, are you gonna go back, let them bust
you off the force, throw you in prison for this? No. Hell, no, you’ll probably
plead insanity: A crime of passion—you did it for love. Love—love is a
disease!” His hand trembled around the bottle neck.
Death to love a sibyl ... death not
to
.
Gundhalinu let himself cough,
postponing the need to answer.
What am I
going to do? I don’t know.
The future opened like an infinite sea. “Ask me
tomorrow..” He glanced toward the doorway as someone entered the
room—Persipone, and a second figure cloaked and hooded.
Persipone
moved aside to let the other step forward, drew the hood carefully back from
her face.
“Moon?”
Gundhalinu got to his knees, pulled himself up the wall, staring. Moon stood
before him, her face subtly altered by cosmetic art—not painted with the tasteless
gaud of Persipone’s, but heightened to a luminous, mother-of-pearl beauty that
blinded his memory of the plain-pale, open face of an outback native girl. Her
up swept hair was caught in a net of silver braids interwoven with golden
beads, convolutions his eyes couldn’t follow. Tor pulled the cloak from her
shoulders, revealing a honey-hued gown that flowed along her body like a field
of wind-rippled grasses, that clung to her everywhere without seeming to,
falling away from a bodice of ivory lace melting sensually against her skin. A
collar of opalescent beadwork hid the secret sign at her throat.
BZ stood
speechless, watched her radiance shine as she absorbed his admiration.
“BZ, I feel
like a fool.” She shook her head; but she brightened still.
“My lady—”
Like a star lord of the Empire he took her hand, bent above it, touched it
briefly to his forehead. And every centimeter a queen. “To thee would I gladly
kneel.” Moon smiled freely, not understanding—her own smile, and not
Arienrhod’s.
“What do
you think, Herne?” Persipone beamed, carrying Moon’s nomad tunic under her arm.
“Will she pass?”
“Did you do
that to her?” Herne asked.
She
twitched a shoulder modestly. “Well ... Pollux gave me a hand. He’s got good
taste, for a machine.”
“Arienrhod
doesn’t like that color.” Herne set the bottle on the floor. “But she’ll pass
... Gods, yes—she’ll pass! Come here, I’ Your Majesty.” He held out his hands.
Gundhalinu
frowned, kept his own hold on Moon’s hand,
felt
her
grip tighten as she looked back at
“Don’t call her that,” warning.
“She’d
better get used to it. I won’t hurt you, damn it! I won’t even touch you.”
Herne let his hands drop. “Just let me look at you awhile.”
Moon let go
of Gundhalinu, went to stand before him. She turned slowly, uncertain of her
skirts, but no longer uncertain under his gaze. He devoured her with his eyes,
consumed her, but she stood with patient dignity, without censure; allowing,
not enduring. Gundhalinu watched her watch Herne through the endless moment,
his own feelings un analyzable He tensed as Herne pushed himself abruptly to
his feet, swaying ... stayed where he was, as Herne dropped clumsily,
jarringly, onto one knee before Moon. “Arienrhod .” He murmured something,
inaudible to any ears but hers. Gundhalinu glanced at Persipone; her
flower-lidded eyes widened, answering his amazement with her own. She made a
crazy-sign in the air, shook her head.