Joan D. Vinge - Snow Queen 1 - Snow Queen.pdf - Joan D Vinge - przemosta

The Snow Queen

Joan D Vinge

Book Club Edition

JOAN D. VINGE received a degree in anthropology from San Diego

State University in 1971 and considers herself an "anthropologist of

the future." She worked briefly as a salvage archaeologist before

turning to writing. Her novella Eyes of Amber won the Hugo Award in

1978, and her stories "Fireship" and "View from a Height" were Hugo

nominees in 1979. Ms. Vinge lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jacket art by Leo and Diane Dillon Jacket typography by Jack

Ribik

Printed in the U.S.A.To the Lady, who gives, and who takes

away.

America

".. . strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto

life, and few there be that find it."

--New Testament, Matthew 7:14

"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall

not have both."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and

artistry of Hans Christian Andersen, whose folk tale "The Snow Queen"

gave me the seeds of this story; and Robert Graves, whose book The

White Goddess provided me with the rich Earth in which it grew. And I

would like to thank those people who helped me weed, and tend, and

harvest the fruits of my labor: my husband Vernor, and my editors Don

Bensen and Jim Frenkel, without whose perceptive and sensitive

suggestions this book would not have grown as strong or as truly. I

would also like to thank my father, for his love of science fiction;

and my mother, for teaching me a woman's strength and giving me the

freedom to become.

The door swung shut silently behind them, cutting off the light,

music, and wild celebration of the ballroom. The sudden loss of sight

and hearing made him claustrophobic. He tightened his hands over the

instrument kit he carried beneath his cloak.

He heard her amused laughter in the darkness at his side, and

light burst around him again, opening up the small room they stood in

now. They were not alone. His tension made him start, even though he

was expecting it, even though it had happened to him five times

already in this interminable night, and would happen several times

more. It was happening in a sitting room this time on the boneless

couch that obtruded into a forest of dark furniture legs dusted with

gold. The irrelevant thought struck him that he had seen a greater

range of styles and taste in this one night than he had probably seen

in forty years back on Kharemough.

But he was not back on Kharemough; he was in Carbuncle, and this

Festival night was the strangest night he would ever spend, if he

lived to be a hundred. Sprawled on the couch in unselfconscious

abandon were a man and a woman, both of them deeply asleep now from

the drugged wine in the half-empty bottle lying on its side on the

rug. He stared at the purple stain that crept across the sculptured

carpet-pile, trying not to intrude any more than he must on their

privacy. "You're certain that this couple has also been

intimate?"

"Quite certain. Absolutely certain." His companion lifted the

white-feathered mask from her shoulders, revealing a mass of hair

almost as white coiled like a nest of serpents above her eager, young

girl's face. The mask was a grotesque contrast to the sweetness of

that face: the barbed ripping beak of a predatory bird, the enormous

black-pupiled eyes of a night hunter that glared at him with the

promise of life and death hanging in the balance.. .. No. When he

looked into her eyes, there was no contrast. There was no difference.

"You Kharemoughis are so self-righteous." She threw off her white

feathered cape. "And such hypocrites." She laughed again; her

laughter was both bright and dark.

He removed his own less elaborate mask reluctantly: an absurd

fantasy creature, half fish, half pure imagination. He did not like

having to expose his expression.

She searched his face in the pitiless lamplight, with feigned

innocence. "Don't tell me, Doctor, that you really don't like to

watch?"

He swallowed his indignation with difficulty. "I'm a biochemist,

Your Majesty, not a voyeur."

"Nonsense." The smile that was far too old for the face formed on

her mouth. "All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become

doctors? Except for the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the

blood and the pain."

Afraid to respond, he only moved past her, crossed the carpet to

the couch and put his instrument kit on the floor. Beyond these walls

the city of Carbuncle climaxed its celebration of the Prime

Minister's cyclical visit to this world with a night of joyous

abandon. He had never expected to find himself spending it with this

world's queen and certainly not spending it doing what he was about

to do.

The sleeping woman lay with her face toward him. He saw dtiat she

was young, of medium height, strong and healthy. Her gently smiling

face was deeply tanned by sun and weather beneath the tangled, sandy

hair. The rest of her body was pale; he supposed she kept it well

protected from the bitter cold beyond the city's walls. The man

beside her was a youthful thirty, he judged, with dark hair and light

skin, and could have been either a local or an off worlder but he was

of no concern now. Their Festival masks looked down in hollow-eyed

censure, like impotent guardian gods resting on the couch back. He

dabbed the woman's shoulder with antiseptic, made the tiny incision

to insert the tracer beneath her skin, doing the simple procedure

first to reassure himself. The Queen stood watching intently, silent

now that he needed silence.

Noise concentrated beyond the locked door; he heard slightly

slurred voices protesting loudly. He shrank like an animal in a trap,

waiting for discovery.

"Don't worry, Doctor." The Queen laid a light, reassuring hand on

his arm. "My people will see that we're not disturbed."

"Why the hell did I let myself be talked into this?" more to

himself than to her. He turned back to his work, but his hands were

unsteady.

"Twenty-five extra years of youth can be very persuasive."

"A lot of good it'll do me if I spend them all in some penal

colony!"

"Get hold of yourself, Doctor. If you don't finish what you've

started tonight, you won't have earned your twenty-five years anyway.

The agreement stands only while I have at least one perfectly normal

clone-child somewhere among the Summer folk on this planet."

"I'm aware of the terms." He finished with the small incision and

sealed it. "But I hope you understand that a clone implant under

these circumstances is not only illegal, it's highly unpredictable.

This is a difficult procedure. The odds of producing a clone who is

even a reasonable replica of the original person are not particularly

good under the most controlled conditions, let alone "

"Then the more implants you perform tonight, the better off we'll

both be. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," tasting self-disgust. "I suppose it is." He

rolled the sleeping woman carefully onto her back and reached into

his kit again.

Here on Tiamat, where there is more water than land, the sharp edge

between ocean and sky is blurred; the two merge into one. Water is

drawn up from the shining plate of the sea and showers down again in

petulant squalls. Clouds pass like emotion across the fiery red faces

of the Twins, and are shaken off, splintering into rainbows: dozens

of rainbows every day, until the people cease to be amazed by them.

Until no one stops to wonder, no one looks up.... "It's a shame,"

Moon said suddenly, pulling hard on the steering oar.

"What is?" Sparks ducked down as the flapping sail filled and the

boom swept across over his head. The outrigger canoe plunged like a

wing fish "It's a shame you aren't paying attention. What do you want

to do, sink us?"

Moon frowned, the moment's mood broken. "Oh, drown yourself."

"I'm half-drowned already; that's the trouble." He grimaced at the

water lapping the ankles of their waterproof kleeskin over boots and

picked up the bailer again. The last squall had drowned his good

nature, anyway, she thought, along with the sodden supply baskets. Or

maybe it was only fatigue. They had been at sea on this journey for

nearly a month, creeping from island to island along the Windward

chain. And for the last day they had been beyond the Windwards,

beyond the charts they knew, striking out across the expanse of open

ocean toward three islands that kept to themselves, a sanctuary of

the Sea Mother. Their boat was tiny for such far ranging, and they

had only the stars and a rough current-chart of crisscrossed sticks

to guide them. But they were children of the Sea as truly as they

were the children of their birth-mothers; and because they were on a

sacred quest, Moon knew that She would be kind.

Moon watched Spark's bobbing head catch fire as the pinwheeled binary

of Tiamat's double sun broke the clouds, to kindle flame in the red

of his hair and his sparse, newly starting beard; throw the

soft-edged shadow of his slim, muscular body down into the bottom of

the boat. She sighed, unable to keep hold of her irritation when she

looked at him, and reached out tenderly to ringer a red, shining

braid.

"Rainbows ... I was talking about rainbows. Nobody appreciates

them. What if there was never another rainbow?" She brushed back the

hood of her mottled slicker and tugged loose the laces at her throat.

Braids as white as cream spilled out and down over her back. Her eyes

were the color of mist and moss agate. She looked up through the

crab-claw sail, squinting as she sorted tumbled cloud from sky to

find vaulting ribbons of fractured light, dimmed here to nothingness,

brightening there until their banners doubled and redoubled.

Sparks dumped another shellful of water overboard, sending it

home, before he lifted his head to follow her gaze. Even without its

sun-browning, his skin was dark for an islander's. But lashes and

eyebrows as pale as her own tightened against the glare, above eyes

that changed color like the sea. "Come on. We'll always have

rainbows, Cuz. As long as we have the Twins and the rain. A simple

case of diffraction; I showed you--"

She hated it when he talked tech--the unthinking arrogance that

came into his voice. "I know that. I'm not stupid." She jerked the

coppery braid sharply.

"Ow!"

"But I'd still rather hear Gran tell us that it was the Lady's

promise of plenty, instead of hearing that trader turn it into

something without any point at all. And so would you? Wouldn't you,

my star child Admit it!"

"No!" He beat her hand away; anger blazed. "Don't make fun of

that, damn it!" He turned his back on her, splashing. She pictured

his knuckles whitening over the corroded crosses-inside-a-circle: the

token his off worlder father had given to his mother at the last

Festival. "Mother of Us All!"

It was the one thing that drove between them like a blade--their

awareness of a heritage that he did not share with her, or with

anyone they knew. They were Summers, and their people rarely had

contact with the tech-loving Winters who consorted with the off

worlders except at the Festivals, when the adventurous and joyful

from all over this world gathered in Carbuncle; when they put on

masks and put off their differences, to celebrate the Prime

Minister's cyclical visit and a tradition that was far older.

Their two mothers, who were sisters, had gone to Carbuncle to the

last Festival, and returned to Neith carrying, as her mother had told

her, "the living memory of a magic night." She and Sparks had been

born on the same day; his mother had died in childbirth. Their

grandmother had raised them both while Moon's mother was at sea with

the fishing fleet. They had grown up together like twins, she often

thought: strange, changeling twins growing up under the vaguely

uneasy gaze of the stolid, provincial islanders. But there had always

been a part of Sparks that she was shut off from, that she could not

share: the part of him that heard the stars whisper. He bartered

surreptitiously with passing traders for mechanical trinkets from

other worlds, wasted days taking them apart and putting them back

together, finally throwing them into the sea in a fit of self disgust

along with propitiating effigies made of leaves.

Moon kept his tech secrets from Gran and the world, grateful that

he at least shared them with her, but nursing a secret resentment.

For all she knew her own father could have been a Winter or even an

off worlder but she was content with building a future that fit under

her own sky. Because of that it was hard for her to be patient with

Sparks, who was not, who was caught in the space between the heritage

he lived and the one he saw in starlight.

"Oh, Sparks." She leaned forward, rested a chilly hand on his

shoulder, massaging the knotted muscles through the thickness of

cloth and oilskins. "I'm not teasing. I didn't mean to; I'm sorry,"

thinking, I'd rather have no father at all than live with a shadow

all my life. "Don't be sad. Look there!" Blue sparks danced on the

ocean beyond red sparks gleaming in his hair. Wingfish flashed and

soared above the swells of the Mother Sea, and she saw the island

clearly now, leeward, the highest of three. Serpentine lace marked

the distant meeting of sea and shore. "The choosing-place! And look

mers!" She blew a kiss in awed reverence.

Long, sinuous, brindle-colored necks were breaking the water

surface around and ahead of them; ebony eyes studied them with

inscrutable knowledge. The mers were the Sea's children, and a

sailor's luck. Their presence could only mean that the Lady was

smiling.

Sparks looked back at her, suddenly smiling too, and caught her

hand. "They're leading us in--She knows why we've come. We've really

come, we're going to be chosen at last." He pulled the coiled shell

flute out of the pouch at his hip and set free a joyous run of notes.

The mers' heads began to weave with the music, and their own eerie

whistles and cries sang counterpoint. The old tales said that they

lamented a terrible loss, and a terrible wrong; but no two tales

agreed on what the loss or the wrong had been.

Moon listened to their music, not finding it sad at all. Her own

throat was suddenly too tight for song: She saw in her mind another

shore, half their lifetime ago, where two children had picked up a

dream lying like a rare coiled shell in the sand at the feet of a

stranger. She followed the memory back through time.. ..

Moon and Sparks ran barefoot along the rough walls between the

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