The Snow Queen (61 page)

“I know,
Starbuck ...” Moon nodded, hiding pity. She helped Herne up onto the bed again
with an un queenly hoist.

Herne glanced
away from her, suddenly remembering that he had an audience; let his face
harden over again. “Your mistake, Dawn treader ... when I was down you should
have kicked me. Arienrhod hates losers.” He leaned on the rowel led word with
masochistic pleasure. “Now listen good, while I tell you the rest.”

“You still
mean to help her try this?” Gundhalinu said, indignant.

Herne
smiled cryptically. ““The prey is
safest at the hunter’s door.” You ought to know that, Blue.”

Moon turned
back, caught between expressions.
Or is
it just that you’re afraid to refuse her?
Gundhalinu sighed; it hurt his
chest. “Then it’ll be because I’m the doorkeeper.” Moon smiled, and was all
that he could see.

“Oh, my
aching back!” Tor stretched to her limits in the privacy of the casino’s
storeroom. The words rebounded from the exposed walls; the room was almost
empty of supplies, and the patrons were doing their best to finish the job.
“Come on, Pollux, get this last container of tlaloc out front for me before
their tongues turn black.” She yawned, hearing the crack of her jaw echo inside
her head.
Empty?
“Lost my mind at
last.”

“Whatever
you say, Tor.” Pollux moved stolidly across the room, following her point like
a faithful hound.

She
giggled, giddy with exhaustion. “I swear you do that on purpose! Don’t you? You
can tell me—”

“Whatever
you say, Tor.” Pollux connected with the crate.

Her mouth
fell, her emotions avalanched from the heights. “Oh, hell, Polly ... what am I going
to do without you? I’m really going to miss you, you greasy hunk of junk.” She
straightened her wig. “There’s only two things Oyarzabal can do for me that you
can’t, and once I get off this rock it’ll be down to one—and I can get that
from any man. No wonder he’s jealous.” She laughed glumly. Oyarzabal had told
her that she would become his wife only if she agreed to get rid of Pollux
first. She had agreed, and felt another link soldered onto the chain he was
forging to turn her into his slave.
He
wants what I am ... so why does he try to change it?
She pushed her wig
crooked, straightened it again. “Damn it, who’s going to keep me neat, anyway?
Hauling crates and turning Summer fish-eaters into queens—all in a day’s work
for you, isn’t it? Don’t you ever wonder about yourself, Pollux? Can you really
do all that and not ask yourself how, or why?” She trailed him back across the
room. “Or whether the kid’s going to save her lover from the Queen, or whether
she’s crazy to want a crud like Sparks Dawntreader at all?”

His
faceless head regarded her with imitation attention, but he said nothing.

“Aagh—” She
shook a hand at him. “I really must be sold out of brains. You don’t even know
I’m here; how’re you going to give a damn when I’m not? So why should I worry?”
She kicked an empty carton spitefully out of their path. “When you finish with
this, come back and get the last barrel of that fermented sap, and hook it up
for
Herne
.”
For Starbuck.
Old Starbuck, and New Starbuck; I know them
both.
And the Queen’s twin.
Thank the gods I’m leaving
Carbuncle soon—before I meet myself walking backwards.

She reached
the doorway, heard voices drifting out of the room across the hall, the one
with a door that was unobtrusively as secure as the vault of the Bank of
Newhaven; the one she had never seen unlocked before. But just—now its seals
were green, it stood unguarded and ever so slightly ajar, and she recognized
one of the voices from behind it as Oyarzabal’s. Pollux clanked away down the
hall toward the casino, oblivious, but she crossed to the door impulsively and
pushed it open.

Half a
dozen heads turned to look at her, all male, all off worlders Three she
recognized immediately as the Source’s lieutenants; Oyarzabal came toward her,
annoyance and subtle panic showing in every move.

“I told you
to secure that door!” one of the strangers said murderously.

“It’s all
right—she runs the place, she knows everything,” Oyarzabal called back. “What
the hell are you doing here?” whispered.

She threw
her arms around his neck, smothered his protests under a wet kiss. “I’m hungry
for my man, that’s all.”
And if it’s one
thing I can’t stand, it’s a locked door.

“Hell,
Persipone!” He pulled away. “Not now! We got a big job to take care of for the
Source here in the city. Later I—”

“Something
for the Queen?”

His hands
brushed her bare upper arms. “How did you know that?”

Wild guess.
“Well, you just said I know everything.” She mugged a hidden face at him. “I
don’t want to make a liar of you. I saw Starbuck come to see the Source today,
and I figured the Queen must have sent him,” scoring another point.

“You know
who Starbuck is, too?”

“Sure. I’m
a Winter, aren’t I? And I do the Source’s business, just like you.” She looked
him brazenly in the eye. “So what’s the rest of it, huh? What’s the Queen
buying, one last surprise for her farewell party? You can tell me, I’m you’re
wife, almost.” She stood higher on her platform shoes, peering over his
shoulder at the knot of gesturing men around a sterile slab of table. Looking
past them she realized that the place was a fully equipped laboratory. She had
always wondered how the Source managed to keep such a variety of illegal
pleasures stocked here, even when they couldn’t be gotten from the regular
suppliers ... Glancing back, she saw on the flawless surface of their meeting
table a single heavy metal carrying case. On the lid, on its sides, WARNING ...
and the barbed trefoil of a sibyl. Her skin began to prickle.

“Well,
yeah, you could say she’s planning kind of a surprise for the Summers.” He grinned.
“But you don’t need to worry your pretty head about it. You’ve had your shots;
and you’re going off world with me, anyway. You don’t care what happens here
after you’re gone, do you?”

She twisted
uncomfortably in his grasp. “What do you mean? ... Hey, why is there a sibyl
sign on that box, huh? That means—” contamination. “

“Biological
contamination?”“ as the fine print suddenly slid into focus. “What’s in
that—germs? Disease, poison?” her voice rose.

“Hey, shut
up, will you? Keep your voice down—” He shook her ungently.

“What are
going to do?” She struggled, her panic rising now. “You’re going to kill
people! You’re going to kill my people!”

“Just the
Summers, goddamn it, Perse! Not the Winters, they’ll be safe; the Queen wants
it this way.”

“No, you’re
lying! It’s going to kill Winters too, the Queen wouldn’t let you kill us!
You’re crazy, Oyar, let me go! Pollux, help me, Pollux—” The other men were up
from the table, coming toward her, and Oyarzabal’s heavy hands still held her
prisoner. Desperately she brought up her knee; he doubled over with a howl and
she was abruptly free to The stunner beam caught her from behind, and she fell
against the door, knocking it shut as she slid helplessly down to the floor.

“You’d
better wait for me here, BZ.” Moon stopped in the middle of the courtyard that
formed a wellspring for the Street at the palace entrance. It was night again
beyond the city storm walls, but even here there were revelers laughing and
dancing, musicians playing. The people at this high end of the Street were more
dazzling and ex—f otic, crusted with jewels, dusted with powder-of-gold; the
imported ‘ splendors of half a dozen worlds clamored for her wonder. Her own
imitation royalty seemed almost drab, and she kept it hidden, along with her
face. BZ’s disreputable clothes were more and more grotesquely out of place,
but he clung to his uniform coat with irrational stubbornness.

“I’m not
letting you go in there without me.” He shook his head, his breath rasping
after their climb up the long spiral to Street’s-end. “The Queen—”

“
I
am the Queen.” She looked at him with
mock disdain. “You forget yourself, Inspector ... By’r Lady, what’s she going
to do, chop off my head?” She grinned, trying for whimsy, but not getting any
feedback. “BZ, how could I explain you, in there?” She glanced toward the
guarded palace entrance, feeling her chest tighten.

“I’ve got
these.” He held out his identification and his stunner. “They make me look
considerably more regulation.” He sealed the open collar of his coat.

“No.” She
felt the tightness turn to pain. “I’m going in there to find
Sparks
, BZ.” She forced his shadowed brown
eyes to keep hers when they tried to slip away. “However it turns out, I have
to do that alone. I can’t do it ...”
in
front of another lover
. Her mouth quivered.

“I know
that.” He did look away now. “And I—I couldn’t watch it happen. Moon, I want
the best for you, believe me; I want whatever happens to be what will make you
happy. But damn it, that doesn’t make it any—easier.”

“Harder.” She
nodded. “It makes it harder.”

“The
entrance ... let me take you that far. The guards would ask questions if you
didn’t have some kind of escort. And I’ll stay here at Street’s-end until you
come out of there—or I’ll learn the reason why.”

She nodded
again, not trying for words. They
waded
the whirlpool
of the circle-dance; she felt her hopes and her regrets sucked down into a
vortex of agonizing anticipation ... You
are
the Queen; be the Queen, stop shaking!
She held her breath as the guards at
the massive doors focused on their approach. The guards wore stunners, as
Gundhalinu had predicted.
Oh, Lady, do
you hear me?
remembering that it was not a goddess who would guide her now,
but only a machine; a machine that had told her she must come.

At the
moment she was certain the guards would challenge her she threw back her hood,
keeping her head high, trying to believe strongly enough to make them believe.

“Your
Majesty! How did you—” The man on the left remembered himself, brought his hand
up to his chest, bowing his head. The woman on the right joined him, their off
worlder-style helmets gleaming whitely. The immense, age-darkened doors began
to open.

Moon turned
quickly as her face began to fall apart, to Gundhalinu’s face taut with dutiful
respect ... with a frustrated loss that only she could see. “Thank you for
your—cooperation, Inspector Gundhalinu.”

He bent his
head stiffly. “My pleasure ... Your Majesty. If you need me again, call me,”
emphasizing each word. His hands twitched uncertainly in front of him; he
saluted, and turned away to lose himself in the crowd.

BZ!
She almost called after him; didn’t, as she
looked back toward the open doors, the darkly shining hallway beyond, beckoning
her on to journey’s end. The guards glanced surreptitiously past her at
Gundhalinu’s seedy, retreating back. Wrapping her cloak close around her, Moon
entered the palace.

She moved
like a ghost along the empty hall, her soft shoes’ passage belying her
substantiality. She put blinders on her senses, afraid of stopping, of losing
herself in the crystalline hypnotic wilderness of purple-black peaks and
snow-burdened valleys, Winter’s domain that mural led the endless walls of the
corridor. And ahead of her, gradually, her straining senses caught the murmur
of the Hall of the Winds. Her hand gripped the control box
Herne
had given her; her palm was moist and
cold.

Herne
had broken out in a sweat and his
own hands had shaken while he told her what she would find there—the captive
wind, the billowing cloud forms the single vaulting strand of walkway above the
Pit. The Pit that he had almost made the grave of
Sparks
, his challenger; the Pit that had
destroyed him instead—because of Arienrhod. Arienrhod had defied her own laws
to intervene, to save
Sparks
, and left
Herne
a prisoner in a
broken body, while pitiless love-hatred ate away his soul.

Moon
reached the end of the hall where it opened out on the air—vast, moaning
reaches of restless air above her, pale cloud-wraiths swelling and shuddering
under the caress of an unearthly lover. She felt herself dwindle and diminish
as the frigid back flow of the outer air discovered her solitary intrusion,
swept hungrily around her, pulling at her cloak. Beyond the breached walls the
thousand thousand stars lay white hot on the ruddy forge of night; but there
was no warmth here, no light except the haunted green glow of the gaping
service shaft below her ... no mercy.

She took
one step forward, and then another, toward the thin span of utter blackness
silhouetted above the abyss.
He didn’t tell
me it would be dark!
Fear made her falter, her fingers playing over the
sequence of buttons on the control box at her wrist—the sequence Herne claimed
would unlock a safe tunnel through the air.
Did
he lie about everything?
But she wasn’t the object of Herne’s twisted
passion, only its surrogate. If her presence here was anything to him it was
only as a tool for his revenge.