The Snow Queen Part 31

"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 hera"" 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 a" 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 Uncla.s.sified, 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 ama"" not quite a laugh, " a" naked to the universe. And it hurts like h.e.l.l ... 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 a" how you Techs swallowed poison any time life gave you a kick in the b.u.t.t. You'd be dead a hundred times over if you'd been through my life a" a thousand tunes!"

"You're right." Gundhalinu cringed at the idea of being trapped inside Herne's mind. "G.o.ds, 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 n.o.body 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 surviveda""

"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 a" 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. "n.o.body has that kind of money. I sure as h.e.l.l don't I don't even have enough to get off this G.o.dd.a.m.n 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 p.r.i.c.k of empathy. Sainted ancestors a" what if I had been born in his body, and he in mine... "I'm a" 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. h.e.l.l, no, you'll probably plead insanity: A crime of pa.s.sion a" you did it for love. Love a" 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 a" 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 a" 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 hi 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 gra.s.ses, 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 s.h.i.+ne as she absorbed his admiration.

"BZ, I feel like a fool." She shook her head; but she brightened still.

"My ladya"" 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 a" her own smile, and not Arienrhod's.

"What do you think, Herne?" Persipone beamed, carrying Moon's nomad tunic under her arm. "Will she pa.s.s?"

"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 pa.s.s... G.o.ds, yes a" she'll pa.s.s! 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 Herne. "Don't call her that," warning.

"She'd better get used to it. I won't hurt you, d.a.m.n 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 a.n.a.lyzable 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 hi the air, shook her head.

"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 m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic 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.

Chapter 40.

"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 mea""

"Whatever you say, Tor." Pollux connected with the crate.

Her mouth fell, her emotions avalanched from the heights. "Oh, h.e.l.l, 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 a" 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. "d.a.m.n it, who's going to keep me neat, anyway? Hauling crates and turning Summer fish-eaters into queens a" 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.

"Aagha"" 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 d.a.m.n 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 G.o.ds I'm leaving Carbuncle soon a" 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 un.o.btrusively as secure as the vault of the Bank of Newhaven; the one she had never seen unlocked before. But justa" 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 hi every move.

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

"It's all right a" she runs the place, she knows everything," Oyarzabal called back. "What the h.e.l.l 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.

"h.e.l.l, Persipone!" He pulled away. "Not now! We got a big job to take care of for the Source here in the city. Later Ia""

"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 Whiter, aren't I? And I do the Source's business, just like you." She looked him brazenly hi 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 p.r.i.c.kle.

"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 meansa"" contamination. "Biological contamination?" as the fine print suddenly slid into focus. "What's in that a" germs? Disease, poison?" her voice rose.

"Hey, shut up, will you? Keep your voice downa"" 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, G.o.dd.a.m.n 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, Polluxa"" 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.

Chapter 41.

"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 exa" 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 Queena""

"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 a" 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 d.a.m.n it, that doesn't make it any a" 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 a" 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 antic.i.p.ation... You are the Queen; be the Queen, stop shaking! She held her breath as the guards at the ma.s.sive 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 G.o.ddess 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 youa"" 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 a" 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 s.h.i.+ning hallway beyond, beckoning her on to journey's end. The guards glanced surrept.i.tiously 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' pa.s.sage 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 hi a sweat and his own hands had shaken while he told her what she would find there a" 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 a" 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 a" 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 b.u.t.tons on the control box at her wrist a" 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 pa.s.sion, only its surrogate. If her presence here was anything to him it was only as a tool for his revenge.

She took another step, and another, until she came s.h.i.+vering to the brink of the Pit. The sudden damp updraft rising out of the shaft caught her by surprise, b.u.t.ting her back on the platform. And with it came the smell of the sea, pungently sweet-sour, fish and salt and moldering pilings. Moon cried out in amazement, her voice swallowed by the wind. "Lady!" The breath of the Sea blew her back again, stumbling over her unaccustomed skirts; she caught her balance, instinctively, a sailor on a pitching deck ... only a sailor, not a Queen.

She lifted her head, saw the shuddering ghostly curtains not as clouds now, capricious and uncontrollable, but as flapping sails un tended under the sea wind. And in her hand, in this palm-sized box, were rudder and line to set a course across this well of the Sea. The updrafts beat her back again, in final warning.

"I will go." She touched the first b.u.t.ton, heard the first tone in the sequence, felt the air grow quiet around her. And with the skill of a hundred generations before her, a people who had dared the sea and the stars before that, she stepped out onto the rimless span and began to walk. Every third step she sounded a new note, being sure each step was neither too short nor too long, holding her concentration locked into the sequence, the pattern, the rhythm.

And as she pa.s.sed over the center of the bridge, the greenish glow intensified and she felt a nameless presence, a soundless voice, an echo from a distant place and time ... the song the sibyl cave had sung to her. She moved more slowly, until she could not move at all; mesmerized by its inhuman beauty, imprisoned in the moment. Her fingers relaxed on the control box, its shrill intruding tone grew thin and faded... A sudden clout of wind knocked her to her knees, the sound of her own scream shattered the prism of spell and set her free. She scrambled up again, recapturing the control note with frantic hands. She hurried on, reckless with panic, feeling the call still tend riling through her mind, but even fainter.

She reached the far rim, stood sobbing for breath on solid ground, dazed and uncomprehending. This wasn't a choosing-place! How could it know her? ... She remembered dimly that somewhere in this city Danaquil Lu had been called by the sibyl machine. Was this the same well of the Sea that had sung to him? She shook out of her cloak, backing away from its rim in silence; turned away from the sight of the abyss, and left the Hall.

She chose another corridor, tracing the arteries of the palace diagram Herne had drawn on paper and graved into her memory. She began to hear music again a" mortal music this time, the sounds of a graceful Kharemoughi art song played by a string quintet. She saw in her mind's eye Aspundh's gardens, the s.h.i.+mmering splendor of the aurora dancing into dawn across a velvet sky. She reached the wide, carpeted stairway leading to the vast hall that was half the palace's second story; met the music drifting sedately down it, and two startled servants who bowed their heads and hurried on past her.

She hurried on, too, climbing past the landing that gave entrance to the grand hall, where tonight the Queen was holding a reception for the Prime Minister and the a.s.sembly members. She went on to the third level, where Herne had told her Starbuck's chambers were, knowing that he would probably still be in the crowded hall below, but knowing that she did not dare enter the place where Arienrhod herself was the center of attention.

But as she left the stairway, she heard the music beckon unexpectedly, found a tiny, half-hidden alcove overlooking the hall below. She wondered whether it was a watchman's perch a" but there was no one watching from it now. She tiptoed forward to the railing, looked down out of the shadows, her skin crawling with the certainty that all eyes would be on her like searchlights.