The Snow Queen (73 page)

“Yes. It
was. I was meant to do this, if I could. And I did. The reason for it is more
important than either one of us, Commander. I think you know what the reason is
... do you still want to stop me?” She held the challenge out in her open
hands, watching the unnameable uncertainty on PalaThion’s face.

PalaThion
rubbed her arms inside the sleeves of her caftan. “That depends on the answer
you give me next. I have a question, sibyl.”

Moon
covered her surprise, nodded. “Ask, and I will answer.. Input.”

“Sibyl,
tell me the truth, the whole truth about the mers.”

Moon’s
surprise followed her down, into the black void of the

But behind
the truth there lay a deeper truth, and as she floated formlessly in the
darkness the vision came to her, and spoke to her alone. She saw the mers, not
as they were—innocent, unknowing playthings of the Sea—but as they had
originally been created: pliant, intelligent beings that carried the germ of
immortality. The first step toward immortality for all of humankind ... and
still more than that. They had been given immortality for a reason,
intelligence for a reason. And the reason was one that she alone knew: the
sibyl machine, the secret repository of all the sibyls’ guidance that lay here
on Tiamat, below Carbuncle, beneath its sea. She saw the mers reigning
peacefully over this water world—guardians of the sibyl mind, possessing the
knowledge that would maintain it and allow it to function. The Old Empire
scientists whose plan this had been had hoped the sibyl network might even buy
them time enough to perfect immortality for human beings; or that it would at
least halt the spreading decay that ate away the Empire from within.

But the
decay had reached this world first, in the form of petty kingdoms broken loose
from the atrophying higher order, whose shortsighted freebooters wanted
imperfect immortality for themselves now, if perfect immortality wasn’t
available. The Empire’s own subjects began a slaughter of the mers that
destroyed their ability to perform their duties, crippling the potential sibyl
network before it had really taken hold. The Old Empire fell completely,
irrevocably, of its own weight ... but the deadly open secret of the water of
life hung on in informational stasis into the present, resurrected with the
Hegemony’s rise, and the cycle of slaughter had begun again. But by this time
the mers had lost all understanding of their purpose here and fallen back into
primitive, unquestioning unity with the sea. The refugee human colonists,
struggling to make a new home here, no more understood the secret beneath the
sea than the mers themselves did; but they paid its vestigial memory homage as
the Sea Mother, and called its immortal children sacred.

The sibyl
network continued to function, dispensing its knowledge to the crippled
cultures picking themselves up out of the Old Empire’s ruins; but its answers
had grown obscure and exasperating through lost potential ... And Moon saw at
last that it had lost an even more profound aspect of its power. The fumbling
manipulations it had used to guide her in doing its will were not a fluke, were
never meant to be a rare or erratic phenomenon. Sibyls had been designed as
more than simply speakers of secondhand wisdom—they had been designed as agents
of social change, to bring stability and humanity back to the cultures they
were born a part of. And their function had almost been lost, along with much
of the clarity of the original data files.

But she,
Moon, had become the Summer Queen—as the sibyl mind had meant her to. And now
that she was Queen, she would begin the task of rebuilding all that had been
destroyed. She was the last hope of the sibyl mind; it had put all of its
faltering resources into guiding her quest. Only if she could reverse its
disintegration could it begin to function again fully—and only then could it
help her put an end to the cycle of off world exploitation forever. It would
continue to guide her while it could; but she would carry the burden of making
the ideal real ...

“
We
further analysis!” Moon swayed on her feet as the Transfer
set her free. PalaThion supported her, let her down safely onto the couch.

“Are you
all right?” PalaThion searched her face for a reassuring sign of comprehension.

She shook
her head, sagging forward under the weight of her final revelation. “Oh, Lady
...” A moan, as she realized at last to what she made her prayer. “How? How can
I change a thousand years of wrong? I’m only one, only Moon—”

“You’re the
Summer Queen,” PalaThion said. “And a sibyl. You have all the tools you need.
It’s just a question of time ... Do you have enough of that, before the
Hegemony comes back again?”

Moon lifted
her head slowly.

“No,”
PalaThion looked away. “I’m not going to stop you. How could I live with so
much death, and live with myself? And for what—?” Her hands tightened.

It took
Moon another moment before she understood that what PalaThion had heard was
only what Ngenet had heard, and not what had been whispered in her own mind
there in the secret darkness. What PalaThion saw as the challenge was not the
real challenge—not a match of sheer technological strength, but a challenge on
a far different level, with far greater repercussions—a change that would
ripple across a galaxy. But PalaThion had understood that there was a
challenge, and that its outcome could be measured in suffering and death; and
that had been enough. Moon nodded. “This means more to more people than I can
ever tell you.”

PalaThion
smiled tightly. “Well, that’s some consolation.” She moved away, across the room,
to the shell sitting on a table by the doorway. She picked it up, held it for a
long moment with her back to Moon.

Moon
stretched out on the couch, her body leaden, her mind numbed with overload;
wondering how she would get past tomorrow dawn to face the long years of the
future.

“I have to
be getting back to—” PalaThion glanced up as another knock sounded at her door.
Moon sat up, her hands twisting on her belt as PalaThion disappeared into the
atrium. She heard the sound of the door opening, of people entering the hall
...

“You!” A
voice sick with betrayal. A voice she knew Moon pushed herself up, started
across the room. She saw three figures silhouetted in the light from the open
door, red hair limned with gold.

“Hold it.
Don’t be in such a hurry, Sparks.” PalaThion caught his arm in a steel grip as
he tried to bolt back out into the alley. “If this was a trap you’d be in my
jail, not my parlor.”

“I—I don’t
understand.” Sparks eased under her hand, confusion showing.

“I’m not
sure I do, either.” PalaThion let him go. His father stood beside her, smiling
reassurance.

“Sparks—”

His head
came up. “Moon!” He started toward her.

She put out
her arms. He came into the room where she stood waiting; the rest of the world
ceased to exist beyond the meeting point of their hearts.

“Oh, Moon!
Moon ...” Sparks breathed the words against her ear, stopped her own words with
another kiss.

“Sparkie
...” She tasted tears.

“Sparks.”
They looked up together, at Sirus’s voice.

“I must be
leaving you now. Now that you’re in—safe hands.” He smiled his sorrow.

Sparks
nodded, separated himself from Moon slowly and went back to his father’s side.
Moon watched them embrace for a last time, feeling her own heart torn, before
his father went back out into the alley noise. PalaThion closed the door,
looked at Sparks expressionlessly.

He forced
himself to meet her eyes. “I’ll tell you what I know about the Source. That’s
what you want, isn’t it, to let me go ... that’s all you want?” as if he didn’t
really believe it.

She nodded,
but her face was strained.

“Look,
Commander—” He shut his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re doing this ... except I
know it’s not done for me. But I want you to know I’m sorry—” Hastily, “I know
it doesn’t do any good,, it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t even mean
anything. But I’m sorry.” He spread his hands.

“It means
something, Dawntreader.” PalaThion looked as though she were surprised to
realize that it actually did.

“There’s
one thing I can do for you, anyway,” abruptly. He strode to the far end of the
room, pried the ugly geometric clock-face out of the wall. Moon watched,
incredulous, as he threw it to the floor and stepped on it. He smiled, rubbing
his hands together. “If you’ve hated this place for no reason—that was the
reason: a subsonic transmitter in the clock.” He came back to Moon’s side, hung
onto her hand as though he were afraid she would disappear. “There might be
others I don’t know about.”

The
awareness of years of needless agony, of questioning her own sanity ... the
awareness that it had finally come to an end, filled PalaThion’s face. “I
always meant to make this museum into a real room again. But somehow I just
never got around to it ...” Dreary disillusionment settled in again, as if it
had never really left her. “Well, Moon. You got everything you came here to
get; I’m glad, for somebody’s sake. After Sparks gives his testimony, the two
of you cease to exist as far as I’m concerned. That’ll be the end of the
problems you’ve caused for me .... I just hope you can solve your own now.” She
went past them and into the back rooms of the apartment.

“What did
she mean?” Sparks turned back.

Moon shook
her head, not meeting his eyes. “All that happened in the last year, I
suppose.” Five years. “And all that’s going to happen, after the Change.” She
looked away at the mask of the Summer Queen.

“What’s
that?” He followed her glance.

“The mask
of the Summer Queen.” She felt him stiffen and pull away.

“Yours? You
won it?” His voice thickened. “No! You couldn’t have—you couldn’t have won,
unless you cheated.”

Moon saw
herself reflected, saw Arienrhod reflected in his eyes. “I won because I was
meant to! I had to win—and not for myself!”

“I suppose
you did it for Tiamat! That’s what she always said, too.” He stood away from
her.

“I’m a
sibyl, Sparks, and that’s why I won! And yes, I care about Tiamat—and Arienrhod
does too. She’s seen more of what this world was, and became, and will stop
being again, than anyone else has ... And she cared about you; you can’t deny
that.”

Sparks looked
down abruptly; Moon felt different kinds of pain start in her chest.

PalaThion
came back into the room wearing her uniform; went on past them and out, without
saying anything more. The door opened and closed behind her, cutting them off
again from the celebration of the world outside. Moon fingered the trailing
streamers of the Summer Queen’s mask. Her mask ...
my mask
.

“
Sparks
, please, believe
that it’s right. My becoming Queen is part of something much greater, much more
important, than either you or me. I can’t explain it to you now—” She knew,
with misery, that he had never been meant to know; that he had always been the
enemy to the shapeless sentience that guided her. “But we have to stop the off
world exploitation of Tiamat. When I was off world I met a sibyl on Kharemough;
I learned that there are sibyls on all the worlds of the Old Empire—the whole
reason they exist is to help worlds rebuild and relearn. I can answer any
question.” She saw his eyes widen, and change.

“And while
I was on Kharemough I began to see what you always saw, about progress,
technology, the magic of what the off worlders do, and how it isn’t magic to
them. They understand so much more, they don’t have to be afraid of disease, or
broken bones, or childbirth. Your mother wouldn’t have died. We have a right to
live that way too, or there wouldn’t be sibyls on this world.”

She saw
hunger in his eyes, for what she had seen that he would never see. But he only
said, “Our people are happy the way they are. If they start reaching for power,
wanting what they don’t have, they’ll end up like the Winters. Like us.”

“What’s
wrong with us? Nothing!” She shook her head. “We want knowledge, we’re asking
for our birthright. That’s all. The off worlders want us to think it’s wrong to
be dissatisfied with what we have. But it’s no worse than being self-satisfied
with it. Change isn’t evil—change is life. Nothing’s all good, or all bad. Not
even Carbuncle. It’s like the sea, it has its tides, they ebb and flow .... What
you choose to do with your life doesn’t matter, unless you have the right to
choose anything. We don’t have any choice. And the mers don’t even have the
right to live.”
And they have to live,
they’re the key to everything.

Sparks
grimaced. “All right, you’ve made
your point! Someone should try to change it. But why us?” His hand closed over
his medal. “You know ... my father said he could get us off Tiamat. He could
arrange for us to go to Kharemough. It would be so easy ...”

“They don’t
need us on Kharemough. They need us here.” Seeing Kharemough, the Thieves’
Market, the night sky:
It would be so
easy. Even if we can plant the seeds here, we’ll never see the final harvest,
we’ll never know whether we lost or won .....
“And we owe something to both
places that we can only pay back here.” Her voice grew dark.