The Snow Queen Part 15

"Looks like just the spot for a day in the country." Cress stretched his arms.

"Many." Silky turned slowly where he stood, looking back and down over the tiers of gardens.

Elsevier led them to the entrance. A dignified middle-aged woman with pale freckles and a silver ring piercing one nostril stood waiting for them; she wore a simple white robe wrapped by a wide sash, covered by strand on strand of heavy turquoise jewelry. "Aunt Elsevier, what an unexpected surprise." Moon was not certain if the gracious smile that included them all went any deeper than her skin.

"Hardly unexpected," Elsevier murmured. "One of the inventions that made my father-in-law's fortune was a system that screens callers electronically... h.e.l.lo, ALV, dear," in Sandhi. "How nice that our visits coincide. I've a friend your father to see brought."

She touched Moon's arm. "I hope he well is." Moon noticed that she did not use the familiar thy.

"Fine, thank you; but at the moment the physicist Darjeengeshkrad is him consulting." She ushered them into the cool interior, closing the doors. Light from the stained gla.s.s panels on either side fragmented Moon's vision, softened her sudden awareness of their group incongruity. "Let me you comfortable make until he's through." She gestured them on down the hall; Moon noticed that her fingernails were long, and had been filed into sculptures.

She took them through a series of rising rooms into one where the wide, color-banded window overhung the painted gardens. ALV pressed one of a series of controls in the wall inset by the door; a large painting of several Kharemoughis picnicking under the trees became a threedy screen full of arguing men. She nodded toward the mounds of red and purple tapestry cus.h.i.+ons, the oases of low wooden tables inlaid with gold and amethyst. "Here you are. The servos will in and out be ... in case you anything need. And now I hope you'll me excuse; I'm going over the tax data for Father, and it's a dreadful project. He'll you join, just as soon as he can." She left them alone with the declaiming debaters on the wall.

"My, my." Cress folded his arms, wheezed indignantly. "Make yourselves at home; steal some silverware." Family ties meant something on Big Blue. All my parentsa""

"Now, Cress." Elsevier shook her head at him. "I've only met the girl a" the woman a" twice, once when she was eight, and once at TJ's funeral. She can't have heard much good about any of us in between. And you know how the highborns are abouta"" she glanced down at herself, "mixed marriages."

Cress shook his head back at her, nudged a table leg with his sandal. "This's fine workmans.h.i.+p, Elsie," loudly. "We could four digits for a couple of those stones upstairs get."

She hissed disapprovingly. "Control yourself. Moon?"

Moon started, turned back from the window.

"Didn't I tell you it was beautiful here?"

Moon nodded, smiling, without the words to say how beautiful.

"Do you think you could stay, and be a sibyl here?"

Moon's smile faded by halves. She shook her head, moved slowly back into the room and settled onto a pile of cus.h.i.+ons. Elsevier's eyes followed her, but she couldn't answer them. I can't answer any question! She pointed at the screen, changing the subject, as Elsevier sat down beside her. "Why are they angry?"

Elsevier peered at the gesticulating speakers, concentrating. "Why, that's old PN Singalu, the Uncla.s.sified's political leader. Bless me, I didn't know he was still alive. It's a parliamentary debate; there's an interpreter, so that temperamental young dandy on the right must be a highborn. They can't speak directly to each other, you know."

"I thought the Uncla.s.sifieds didn't have any rights." Moon watched the two men face each other burning-eyed from their podiums, across the neutral ground of the droning, shaven-headed interpreter. They ran over the tail of his words to answer each other, while he repeated what they had already heard, like children arguing. Looking at them she couldn't tell one from the other, wondered how they knew for themselves which one was the inferior.

"Oh, they have some rights, including the right to representation; it's simply that everything not specifically given to them is specifically forbidden. And they aren't allowed enough representatives to change the laws. But they keep trying."

"How can they run a government at all; I thought the Prime Minister was out in s.p.a.ce?"

"Oh, he's on another level entirely." Elsevier waved a hand. "He and the a.s.sembly represent Kharemough, but they represent the days when Kharemough was first making contact with the other worlds that became the Hegemony." Kharemough had thought that it was rebuilding the Old Empire in microcosm, with the help of the Black Gate. But in fact they came nowhere near the Old Empire's technological sophistication, and they had learned in time that real control over several subject worlds wasn't practical without a faster than-light star drive Their dreams of domination were swallowed up in the vastness of s.p.a.ce; until they could regain a star drive they would have to be content with economic dominance, a kind the rest of the Hegemony was willing to support. But the Prime Minister and his floating royalty continued as they had begun, a symbol of unity, although not the unity of empire. They traveled from world to world, accepting homage as virtual G.o.ds a" seemingly ageless, protected by time dilation and the water of life from the precession of the universe outside.

"And they're always welcome, of course; because, ironically, they're nothing but a harmless fantasy." The voices of the debaters, and the tempers behind them, had been rising while Elsevier spoke; her sudden gasp echoed the stricken silence that suddenly fell, half a continent away, in the hall of government.

Moon saw the look of wonder that spread over the worn-leather face of the old man ... and the utter disbelief on the face of the arrogant young Tech. Even the interpreter lost his glaze, sat openmouthed between them, looking left to right. "What?" she said, and Cress echoed it.

"He didn't wait; he didn't wait for the interpreter!" Elsevier pressed her hands against her cheeks with a cry of delight. "Oh, look at that old man! He worked all his life for a moment like this, knowing it would never come... And now it has." There was a rising sigh of noise from the hall; the young Tech turned and walked off camera like a man caught in a trance. Someone wearing gray robes and a mantle of authority took his place, calling for order.

"What happened?" Moon leaned forward, hugging her knees with absorbed tension.

"The Tech forgot himself," Elsevier breathed. "He addressed Singalu directly a" as an equal a" instead of through an interpreter. And in front of millions of witnesses!"

"I don't understand."

"Singalu is now a Technician!" Elsevier laughed. "One way to rise in rank on Kharemough is for someone from a higher level to raise you to it, by addressing you as an equal before witnesses. And that's what happened."

"What if Singalu did it? Would the Tech become Uncla.s.sed?" Moon watched the wiry, feather-haired old man clutch the podium, weeping unashamedly, grinning through his tears. She felt her own throat tighten; beside her Elsevier wiped at her eyes.

"No, no, the Tech would merely have had him arrested ..." Elsevier broke off as the man in gray crossed the platform to Singalu and embraced him stiffly, offered congratulations face to face. "Oh, if only TJ could have this moment seen, this shareda""

"And would he equally in the dark moment share, when the young man who it caused home tonight goes and poison takes?"

"KR?" They turned together toward the voice at the door. Moon saw a once-tall man, stooping now under the weight of years a" even though Kharemoughis held off old age more skillfully than any people who didn't possess the water of life. She blinked, looked at him again, but a second look did not remove the brown parchment of his skin, and even his loose caftan could not disguise all the marks of age. But this was TJ's younger brother ... how could he have aged so badly?

"Yes, KR," Elsevier sat back, smoothing her skirts. "He would that moment also share. Even though the young fool brought it on himself; even though you people take 'death before dishonor' far too lightly. Do you share in old Singalu's joy, too?" The familiar thou did not replace the formal you with Aspundh, either.

He smiled, on the edge of good-natured laughter. "Yes, I do. He's himself both smart and capable proven, over the years a" and this proves again that our system for intelligence and initiative selects; despite all that TJ did it upside down to turn, promoting every lowborn who at him smiled."

"KR, how can you that say? You know the highborns their purity like virgins protect! No one would your father raise up, one of the most brilliant minds of his generation."

"But I've raised up been." He shrugged benignly. "My father was satisfied; he knew it would come, in time."

"When there was enough credit in the bank to pay for adopting some respectable ancestors," Cress said.

Aspundh's expression remained placid; Moon guessed that he did not speak Tiamatan. "It's a highly scientific structuring of society, perfectly suited to our technological orientation. And it works a" it raised us up out of the chaos of the pre s.p.a.ce era forever. It's us a millennium of stable progress given."

"Of stagnation, you mean." Elsevier frowned.

He gestured indignantly. "You can still that say, after living on the most advanced world in the Hegemony?"

"Technically advanced. Socially you're hardly better than On dinee."

He sighed. "Why do I feel that I've this conversation before had?"

Elsevier lifted her hands. "Forgive me, KR a" I didn't come politics to argue, or your time or mine to waste. I've to you in your apolitical capacity come; and I've brought someone who your guidance needs." She got to her feet, drew Moon up from the cus.h.i.+ons.

Moon stood numbly, staring as KR Aspundh came forward on slippered feet; staring at the darkly gleaming trefoil suspended on his chest. "A sibyl! He can't be!"

He stopped, with a solemn nod. "Ask, and I will answer."

Elsevier reached up and unfastened the enameled collar, slipped it from Moon's throat, uncovering the matching tattoo. "Your sister hi spirit. Her name is Moon."

Moon's hands flew to her throat; she turned away, hiding the sign of her failed inspiration as though she had been caught naked in his presence. But Elsevier turned her back firmly, lifted her chin until she looked into his eyes again.

"You honor my house," Aspundh bent his head to her. "Forgive me if my behavior has you disappointed, and made you ashamed that you came."

"No." Moon dropped her eyes again, spoke awkwardly in Sandhi. "You have not. I'm not... I'm not a sibyl. Not here, this is not my world."

"Our vision is not by time or s.p.a.ce limited; thanks to the miracle of the Old Empire's science." He came forward, searching her face as he came. "We can anywhere answer, any time ... but you can't. You've tried, and failed." He stopped before her, gazing evenly into her astonished eyes. "Anyone could that much see; it doesn't any special insight take. Now why? That's the question you must for me answer. Sit down now, and tell me where you come from." He lowered himself onto the cus.h.i.+ons, using a tabletop for leverage.

Moon sat down, facing him across the table; Elsevier filled hi the circle with Silky and Cress. "I came from Tiamat."

"Tiamat!"

A nod. "And now the Lady no longer speaks through me, because I left my a" my promises unkept."

"The "Lady?" He glanced at Elsevier.

"The Sea Mother, a G.o.ddess. Maybe I'd better how we came to be here explain, KR." She pressed her hands together, leaning forward, and told him how it had happened. Moon saw a furrow deepen between Aspundh's white brows, but Elsevier was not watching. "We couldn't her back take, and we needed an astrogator through the Gate to get. Because Moon was a sibyl, I a" I used her," a slight emphasis on used. "She had only just a sibyl become, and since then she hasn't into Transfer been able to go." The fingers twined, twisted.

A high-albedo mechanical servant appeared in the doorway, moved to Aspundh's shoulder with a tray of tall gla.s.ses. He nodded, and it set the drinks down on the table. "Will there anything else be, sir?"

"No." He waved it away with a hint of impatience. "You mean you her in Transfer for hours left, unprepared? My G.o.ds, that's the kind of irresponsible act I'd of TJ expect! It's a wonder she's not a vegetable."

"Well, what were they supposed to do?" Cress interrupted angrily. "Let the Blues us take? Let me die?"

Aspundh looked at him, expressionless. "You consider her sanity a fair trade."

Cress's gaze dropped to the trefoil at Aspundh's chest, moved to Moon's tattooed throat, but not to meet her eyes. He shook his head.

"I do." Moon watched Cress's profile soften as she spoke the words. "It was my duty. But I a" I wasn't strong enough." She took a sip from the tall, frosted gla.s.s in front of her; the apricot-colored liquid effervesced inside her mouth, making her eyes tear.

"Since you're me this now telling, I would you call one of the strongest-minded a" or luckiest a" human beings I've ever known."

"Am I?" Moon cupped her hands against the soothing burn of the cold gla.s.s. "Then when will I stop being afraid back into the darkness to go? When I feel it over me start to come, the Transfer a" it's like dying inside." Another swallow, her eyes blurred. "I hate the darkness!"

"Yes, I know." Aspundh sat silently for a moment. "Elsevier, will you for me translate? I think it important will be that Moon every word perfectly understands."

Elsevier nodded, and began to give Moon the words in Tiamatan as Aspundh spoke again: "Tiamat is a" undeveloped. Do you understand where you go when you're thrown into the darkness? Do you understand why sometimes you see another world instead?"

Elsevier shook her head at Aspundh as she finished. "That's why I her to you brought."

Moon looked toward the window, searching the air. "The Lady chooses ..."

"Ah. So on your world your G.o.ddess is in charge a" or you've always believed that she is. What would you say if I told you that your visions weren't a gift from the G.o.ds, but a legacy of the Old Empire?"

Moon realized that she had been holding her breath, let it out suddenly. "Yes! I mean, I a" I expected it. Everyone here knows I'm a sibyl; how could they know? You're a sibyl; and you've never heard of the Lady." She had long ago stopped seeing the Sea Mother literally, a beautiful woman with seaweed hair, clad in spume, rising from the waves in a mer-drawn sh.e.l.l. But even the formless, elemental force she had sometimes felt touch her soul would not have left Her element or journeyed so far. If in fact she had ever even felt anything, beyond her own longing to feel... "You have so many G.o.ds, you off worlders She was too numbed by loss and change to feel one more blow. "Why do you have so many?"

"Because there are so many worlds; each world has at least one, and usually many, of its own. "My G.o.ds or your G.o.ds," they say, 'who knows which are the real ones?" So we wors.h.i.+p them all, just to be sure."

"But how could the Old Empire put sibyls everywhere, if no G.o.d did? Weren't they only humans?"

"They were." He reached out to the bowl of sugared fruits in the mil table center. "But in some ways they had the power of G.o.ds. They could travel between worlds directly, in weeks or months, not years a" they had hyper light communicators and star drives And yet their Empire fell apart in the end ... even they overextended themselves. Or so we think."

But even as the Empire fell, some remarkable and selfless group had created a storehouse, a data bank, of the Empire's learning in every area of human knowledge. They had hoped that with all of humanity's discoveries recorded in one central, inviolable place, they would make the impending collapse of their civilization less complete, and the rebuilding that much swifter. And because they realized that technical collapse might be virtually total on many worlds, they had devised the simplest outlets for their data bank that they could conceive of a" human beings. Sibyls, who could transmit their receptivity directly to their chosen successors, blood to blood.

Moon's fingers felt the scar on her wrist. "But ... how can someone's blood show you what's in a a" a machine on some other world? I don't believe it!"

"Call it a divine infection. You understand infection?"

She nodded. "When someone is sick, you stay away from them."

"Exactly. A sibyl's 'infection' is a man-made disease, a biochemical reaction so sophisticated that we've barely begun to unravel its subtleties. It creates, or perhaps implants, certain restructurings in the brain tissue that make a sibyl receptive to a faster-than-light communication medium. You become a receiver, and a transmitter. You communicate directly with the original data source. That's where you are when you drown in nothingness: within the computer's circuits, not lost in s.p.a.ce a" or with other sibyls living on other worlds, who have answers to questions the Old Empire never thought to ask." He lifted his gla.s.s to her with an encouraging smile. "All this verbalizing makes me dry."

Moon watched the trefoil turn against the rich, gold-threaded brown of his robe; saw her own turning silently, exiled, on a hook in an air-conditioned room somewhere high overhead. "Is it the disease that makes people go mad, then? It's death to kill a sibyl ... death to love a sibyla"" She broke off, touching the cool stones along the table edge.

He raised his eyebrows. "Is that what they say on Tiamat? We have that saying too; though we don't take it literally any more. Yes, for some people infection with the 'disease' does cause madness. Sibyls are chosen for certain personality traits, and emotional stability is one ... and of course a sibyl's blood can transmit the disease. So can saliva a" but usually the other person must have an open wound to become infected. Obviously it isn't 'death to love a sibyl," with reasonable care, or you wouldn't have seen my daughter today. I suppose the superst.i.tion was fostered in order to protect sibyls from harm in less civilized societies. The very symbol we wear, the barbed trefoil, is a symbol for biological contamination; it's one of the oldest symbols known to man."

But she heard nothing after a" "It isn't death to love a sibyl? Then Sparks ... we don't have to be apart. We can live together! El sevier!" Moon hugged the old woman until she gasped. "Thank you! Thank you for bringing me here a" you've saved my life. Between the sea and the sky, there's nothing I won't do for you!"

"What's this?" Aspundh leaned on his fist, bemused. "Who is this Sparks? A romance?"

Elsevier pushed Moon away to arm's length and held her there gently. "Oh, Moon, my dear child," she said with inexplicable sorrow, "I don't want to have to hold you to that promise."

Moon twisted her head, not understanding. "We were pledged, but he went away when I became a sibyl. But now, when I go back I can tell hima""

"Go back? To Tiamat?" Aspundh straightened.

"Moon," Elsevier whispered, "we can't take you back." The words rushed out like a flight of birds.

"I know, I know I have to wait untila"" She beat the words away.

"Moon, listen to her!" The shock of Cress's broken silence stopped it.

"What?" She went slack in Elsevier's grip. "You said we woulda""

"We're never going back to Tiamat, Moon. We never meant to, we can't. And neither can you." Elsevier's lip trembled. "I lied to you," looking away, searching for an easy way, finding none. "It's all been a monstrous lie. I'm a" sorry." She let go of Moon's arms.

"But why?" Moon brushed distraughtly at her hair, strands of cobweb tickling her face. "Why?"

"Because it's too late. Tiamat's Gate is closing, becoming too unstable for a small s.h.i.+p like ours to pa.s.s through safely. It ... hasn't been months since we left Tiamat, Moon. It's been more than two years. It will be just as long going back."

"That's a lie! We weren't on the s.h.i.+p for years." Moon pushed up onto her knees as comprehension melted and ran down around her. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because I should have done it at the beginning." Elsevier's hand covered her eyes. Cress said something to Aspundh in rapid Sandhi.

"She isn't lying to you, Moon." Aspundh sat back, unconsciously separating himself from them. Elsevier translated his words dully. "s.h.i.+p's time is not the same as time on the outside. It moves more slowly. Look at me, look at Elsevier a" and remember that I was younger than TJ by many years. Moon, if you returned to Tiamat now you would have been missing for nearly five years."

"No ... no, no!" She struggled to her feet, wrenching loose as Cress tried to hold her down. She crossed the room to the window, stood gazing out on the gardens and sky with her forehead pressed hard against the pane. Her breath curtained the gla.s.s with ephemeral frost, making her eyes snow blind "I won't stay on this world. You can't keep me here! I don't care if it's been a hundred years a" I have to go home!" She clenched her hands; her knuckles squeaked on the gla.s.s. "How could you do this to me, when you knew?" turning furiously. "I trusted you! d.a.m.n your s.h.i.+p, and all your G.o.ds d.a.m.n you!"

Aspundh was standing now beside the low table; he came slowly toward her across the room. "Look at them, Moon." He spoke quietly, almost conversationally. "Look at their faces, and tell me they wanted your life to ruin."

She forced her unwilling eyes back to the three still sitting at the table a" one face inscrutable, one bowed with shame, one winking with the track of acid-drop tears. She did not answer; but it was enough. He led her back to the table.

"Moon, please understand, please believe me ... it's because your happiness is so important to me that I couldn't bring myself to tell you." Elsevier's voice was thin and brittle. "And because I wanted you to stay."

Moon stood silently, feeling her face as rigid and cold as a mask. Elsevier looked away from it. "I'm so sorry."

"I know." Moon forced the words out past frozen lips. "I know you are. But it doesn't change anything." She sank down among the pillows, strengthless but still unforgiving.