The Snow Queen Part 8

"I a" have to find my cousin."

"That's the only reason?"

"It's the only thing that matters." He belongs with me. She looked down at the trefoil.

"Then it's not just a kinsman you're looking for, is it?"

"No."

"A lover?" very gently.

She nodded, swallowing to ease the sudden cramp in her throat. "The only one I'll ever love. Even if I never find him ..."

Elsevier put out an age-stiffened hand, patted her own. "Yes, dear, I know. Sometimes you find one that you'd walk barefoot through the fires of h.e.l.l for. What makes that one so different from all the rest, I wonder ... ?"

Moon shook her head. And what made him different from me?

"Are you from Carbuncle?" She looked up. "Maybe you've seen him there. He has red hair ..."

Elsevier shook her head. "No, alas. We're not from the city. We're just a" visiting, temporarily." She glanced toward the door, as if she suddenly remembered why they were waiting.

"Oh ... What did you mean, about not asking the right quesa""

The door of the inn burst open with enough force to slam it back against the wall. Moon looked up with the others, her question left hanging in the air.

Two figures came in out of the darkness: a slender man of medium height, and a tall st.u.r.dy woman, both off worlders heavily dressed in matched clothing, wearing helmets. Holding weapons.

"Blues!" Cress muttered, his mouth barely moving. Elsevier's hand rose to her throat, drawing the slicker together over the orange beneath it. She looked down at the darkness of her skin, let the hand drop.

"What is it?" Moon controlled a desire to leap up as Silky took refuge beside her. "Who are they?"

"No one you should know any better," Elsevier said mildly. She picked up her mug before she looked back at the intruders. "Well, Inspector. This is unexpected. You're a long way from home tonight."

"Not half as far from home as you are, I expect." The woman moved forward, searching them with her eyes, the weapon still showing in her fist.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean." Elsevier glittered with controlled indignation. "This is a private party of responsible Hegemony citizens, and I consider your bursting in like this highlya""

"Spare me, tech runner The woman gestured with her gun, her mouth set. "Your s.h.i.+p was spotted coming in, you're on this planet illegally. I charge you further with suspicion of smuggling contraband items. Stand up, all of you, and put your hands on top of your heads."

Moon sat frozen, looking from Elsevier to Cress and back; but their eyes were only for the strangers. The trefoil cut into her tightening hand; understanding just enough to be afraid, she stuffed it into her sweater.

But the uniformed woman spotted the motion and came forward; as she came Moon saw the frown on her face change into the same incredulity that had shown on the faces of the two Winters on the quay. The man behind her began to move watchfully to the side, as Elsevier and Cress got to their feet together. Moon felt Elsevier nudge her elbow and rose awkwardly, her chair grating on the floor.

"Now, Silky!" Elsevier murmured, jerking Moon back as the alien bolted away from the table, scrambled toward the doorway they had all come through. Moon came up against the chimney wall as the two officers wavered between targets, as Cress swept a mug from the table and hurled it, as the mug struck the light fixture suspended from the rafters and smashed it. A shower of electric sparks and foam rained down in the sudden darkness.

"Run for it!"

"BZ! Nail him!"

"Moon, stay out of this!" Moon felt Elsevier shove her ungently away, stumbled blindly over her own chair and fell against the table. There was noise and a cry behind her; dimly she saw the woman officer leap to catch Elsevier by the slicker. Moon's hand closed over another mug on the tabletop; she brought it around and down with all her strength on the woman officer's arm and heard a gasp of pain. Elsevier broke free, herded her ahead toward the way out. "Never, never hit a Blue, my deara"" breathlessly, next to her ear. "But thank you. Now run!"

Moon bolted through the doorway, her mind a white blur like the brightly lit room beyond, then through another door into a dark alley.

"This way!" Cress materialized beside her, pointing left. "That's a dead end. Elsie?"

"Here." The door banged behind them. "Don't talk about it, get to the LBf"

They ran; Moon caught the old woman's hand, lending her strength and speed. Up ahead she saw the alien in a band of reddish gold starlight, disappearing into a bolt-hole of shadow; behind them she heard the door fly open and a shout of discovery. Her free hand went dead suddenly up to the wrist; panic gave her wings.

Cress slid to a halt where she had seen the alien disappear. She saw a night-gilded board fence, saw him duck through the s.p.a.ce between two rotten planks. She followed him through, pulling Elsevier with her, and almost fell over a peninsula of piled driftwood on the other side. "Get to the LBf" Cress waved them on frantically. "I'll plug the gap."

"This way." Elsevier pulled at her arm, started away through the stacks and mounds of salvage and flotsam. Moon went with her, looking back as Cress dragged the spiny-armed corpse of a tree shrub up against the gap. A limb caught in his parka as he turned away and jerked him back; she saw him struggle free before a pile of moldy sails cut off her view. Elsevier stumbled over some obstacle in the shadows beside her, and she put out a steadying arm. Before them now across the shadow and gold of the star-washed yard she saw a lens of battered metal lying in the midden. A hatch stood open in its side, and a ramp extended to the ground. "What is it?"

"Sanctuary," Elsevier gasped. They reached the ramp and went up it together to find Silky waiting at the top. "Switched on?"

The alien grunted affirmation, gestured with a tentacle.

"Then strap in, we're getting out of here." Elsevier leaned against a bulkhead, a hand pressed against her heart. "Cress?" She looked toward the hatchway, but it showed them only junk and smoldering sky.

Moon turned back, leaned out to look down the ramp. Cress came running; but as she watched he tripped and fell, lay stunned on the ground for a s.p.a.ce of heartbeats. When he pushed himself up at last and came on, she thought of a man running underwater, with every motion resisted. "Here he comes!"

He reached the foot of the ramp, stopped, and looked up it for a long moment with his arms wrapped across his stomach before he began to climb. Behind him she saw one of their pursuers round the heap of sails. "Cress, hurry!"

But even as she called to him he slowed, midway up the ramp, his eyes glazing with despair.

"Come on!"

He shook his head, swaying where he stood.

Across the lot she saw both police officers now, saw one of them taking aim at him, heard a voice shout "Hold it!"

Moon pushed out and down the ramp, grabbed the flapping sleeve of his parka and dragged him forward through the hatch. The ramp telescoped upward behind them, and the door hissed shut, hurting her ears with pressure-change. Cress clutched at the frame of the inner doorway as Moon found her balance, letting him go. Her hand was still crippled with a strange paralysis; she looked down at it and gave a small, disbelieving cry as she saw it smeared with blood.

"Cress, get up front anda"" Elsevier stopped as Cress crumpled to the floor. Moon saw the vivid stain on his jacket and knew that the blood was not her own.

"Oh, my G.o.ds, Cress!"

"What happened?" Moon dropped to her knees beside him, reaching out.

He struck her reddened hand aside. "No!" She saw the hilt of her own scaling knife protruding from the pouch pocket at the center of the jacket's spreading stain. "Don't touch it ... I'll gush." Moon pulled back, folded her hands against her sides. "Elsevier?" He looked past her.

"Cress, how did it happen?" Elsevier let herself down stiffly on his other side, laying her hand against his cheek. Silky appeared in the doorway behind her.

Cress laughed through white lips. "Should've let the young mistress keep her dagger ... fell on the G.o.dd.a.m.n thing, running. Put me in the freezer, Elsie, I'm h-hurting ..." He struggled to push himself up, groaned through clenched teeth as they hauled him to his feet.

"Silky, get to the controls."

Silky moved ahead of them as they guided Cress through into the next chamber and let him down onto a level couch in the cramped s.p.a.ce.

"Putting her knife in your pocket! Dear boy, that was incredibly stupid, you know." Elsevier kissed her fingers and laid them lightly above his eyes.

"I'm an astrogator, not ... not a hired killer. What do I ... know about it?" He coughed; a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, ran down his cheek toward his ear.

Elsevier stepped back as a smoke-colored translucent cone lowered over the couch, shutting him away from their view. "Sleep well." It had the sound of a benediction; but she shook her head, looking up into Moon's unspoken question. "No. This will keep him alive until we can get him to help." Her face changed. "If we can even get out of the atmosphere before those Blues call down heaven's wrath. Strap in, dear, the acceleration may be unpleasant your first time." She pushed past, settled into a padded, upright seat before a panel of controls. The alien was settled in a second seat, tentacles suspended above a board of lights. In front of them a wide, thickly gla.s.sed port showed her another view of the junkyard. Moon took the third upright couch and fastened the straps uncertainly. The alien made a guttural query.

"Well, what else am I going to do?" Elsevier said sharply. "We can't leave her to the police; not a sibyl. Not after she fought to save me a" you know what they'd do ... Lift!"

Moon leaned forward, listening, was driven back into the seat by the crest of an unseen wave. She gasped in surprise, gasped again as the pressure went on increasing, squeezing the air out of her lungs. She fought against it like a dr owner with no more success; collapsed into the cus.h.i.+oning curves with a whimper of disbelief. Between the forward seats she could no longer see the junkyard or any ground at all, but only stars. As she watched, the moon fell like a stone past the window and disappeared. She shut her eyes, felt herself being sucked down into a whirlpool of nightmare, bottomless and black.

But among the tumbled waters of dark panic she found the memory of another blackness, more utter, more absolute than any she would ever know a" the black heart of the Transfer. The Transfer this was like the Transfer. She clung to that anchor, felt the solid weight of familiarity slow the spiraling of her fear. She centered her concentration on the disciplined rhythms of mind and body that kept the narrow thread of her awareness tied to reality slowly she settled into enduring.

She opened her eyes again, saw that the stars were still outside; rolled her head to look over at the wall of blinking lights and dials beside her own seat. She did not try to touch them. She became aware of Elsevier's voice, strained, almost inaudible, and the alien's responses; one was as unintelligible to her as the other.

"... Checking. No tracking alerts going out yet. Hope that they hadn't re layers ... by the time they call it in we may clear... Are the s.h.i.+elds green?"

Silky responded, in unintelligible alien speech.

"I hope it too ... but stay ready to s.h.i.+ft power."

(Response.) "Affirmative, we're damped. They look for inbound runners, anyway they don't look behind them enough ... I pray they don't."

(Response.) A weak chuckle. "Of course ... Time elapsed?"

Moon closed her eyes again, comforted, letting the words go on by. They were flying, somehow, in this metal-bound cabin; but it was nothing like her flight with Ngenet. She wondered why, and how, wondered dimly whether this was anything like being on an off worlder stars.h.i.+p... Her eyes came open suddenly. "Elsevier!"

"Yes... Are you all right, Moon?"

"What are we doing? ... Where are we going?" She gasped for air.

"We're leaving... Time elapsed?"

(Response.) "Out of the well!" A squeezed laugh of triumph. "Cutting energy we'd better save what we've got left for rendezvous."

The pressure vise dissipated around her, as abruptly as it had come. Moon stretched her arms in release. With the crus.h.i.+ng weight gone from her body, she felt as though she had no substance at all, rising like a bubble through the waters of the sea ... rising from the padded couch against the restraining straps. She looked down at herself wildly, clutched the straps with her hands.

"Ohh, Silky. I'm getting too old for this. This is no way for a civilized person to make a living."

(Response.) "Of course it's been the principle of the thing! You don't think I would have carried on TJ's work just for money? And certainly not for the thrill of it." She tsked. "But there won't be any more trips, anyway. We won't make a bra.s.s cawie from this one, we've still got all the goods on board... Ah, poor Miroe! The G.o.ds know what's become of him." There was the sound of a catch releasing; Moon saw Elsevier's silvery head begin to rise up past the seat back. "But we never shall, now." Elsevier turned to look back at her. "Moon, are youa""

"Don't be afraid!" Moon raised wondering eyes. "It's the Lady's presence. The room is full of the Sea, that's why we're floating... It's a miracle."

Elsevier smiled at her, a little sadly. "No, my dear a" only the absence of one. We're beyond the reach of your G.o.ddess, beyond the grasp of your world. There's simply no gravity this far out to hold you down. Come forward and see what I mean."

Moon unstrapped uncertainly, and pushed herself up. Elsevier lunged and caught her by the leg before she crashed into the cone that hung, like the one that protected Cress, above her own couch. "Gently!" Elsevier drew her forward to the window and pointed down. Below them lay the curve of Tiamat's sphere, a foam-flecked swell of translucent blue breaking against the wall of stars.

In her heart she had known what she would find; but as she drifted to the window, the vision surpa.s.sed anything she had imagined, and she could only breathe, "Beautiful ... beautiful..." She pressed her hands against the cold transparency.

"Wait until you pa.s.s through the Black Gate, and see what lies on the other side."

"Oh, yes ..." A dark seed of doubt sprouted in her mind. She pulled her eyes away, turning her head. "The Black Gate? But that's how the off worlders go to other worlds..." She looked back and out, at her entire world that had seemed so immense and so varied lying below her feet like a blue gla.s.s fis.h.i.+ng float. "No ... no, I can't go through the Gate with you. I have to go to Carbuncle. I have to find Sparks." She pushed firmly away from the window, caught herself on the back of Silky's seat. "Will you take me back down, now? Can you, would you put me a" ash.o.r.e at the star port "Take you back down?" A frown creased the s.p.a.ce between Elsevier's blue-violet eyes; she pressed her hands against her lips. "Oh, Moon, my dear ... I was afraid that you hadn't understood. You see, we can't take you back down. They'll track us, and we're low on charge besides a" there's no way we can go back now. I'm afraid that when I told you about the Gate I wasn't offering you a choice."

Chapter 12.

"You're the owner of this vehicle?" Jerusha stood beside the hovercraft on the quay, her breath frosting in the frigid night air. She frowned her bad humor at the big man who leaned against it with the same false self-possession the tech runners in the bar had displayed. Gundhalinu stood beside her, rising and settling on his heels with barely controlled frustration.

"I am, as I plainly have every right to be." His voice was like crunching gravel. The man gestured abruptly at his face; the light was poor, but he was obviously an off worlder a" from D'doille, she guessed, or maybe Number Four. "Have you come all the way from Carbuncle just to give me a parking ticket, Inspector?"

Jerusha grimaced, using her irritation to disguise her discomfort. She kept her arms crossed tightly against her heavy coat, nursing the one that the girl in the bar had struck with a mug. Her right forearm was a white-hot star, burning furiously at the center of her body's s.h.i.+vering universe; the pain nauseated her, only the intensity of her anger kept her mind clear. An old woman and a handful of misfits had made an a.s.s of her, and eating at her was the suspicion that it was because shed wanted them to. d.a.m.n it, her place was to enforce the law, not rearrange it to suit herself! And at least this one hadn't gotten away. "No, Citizen Ngenet, we've come to accuse you of attempting to buy embargoed goods."

His face was the picture of resentful surprise. G.o.ds, what I wouldn't give to just once see one of them put up his hands and say, "I admit it."

"I'd like to know on what evidence you're making the accusation. You're not going to finda""

"I know we won't. You didn't have time to make the deal. But you were seen in the presence of one of the off worlders who escaped us."

"What are you talking about?"

She could almost believe that he didn't know. "Female, age roughly seventeen standard years, pale hair and skin."

"She's no smuggler!" Ngenet pushed away from his craft, glaring.

"She was with them when we went to make the arrest," Gundhalinu said. "She struck the inspector, she ran with the rest."

"She's a Summer from the Windwards, her name is Moon Dawntreader. I gave her a ride, and I left her at the inn becausea"" He broke off, Jerusha wondered what he was afraid to say. "She wouldn't know anything about it."

"Then why did she help them escape?"

"What the h.e.l.l would you do, if you were fresh from Summer and two off worlders burst in on you with guns?" He paced two agitated steps between them. "What in the names of a thousand G.o.ds would you think, if you were her? You didn't hurt her a" ?"

Jerusha grimaced again, twisted it into a smile. "Ask it the other way around." She wondered with more interest why he was trying to protect the girl. His mistress?

"You said they all escaped?"

Gundhalinu laughed sourly. "For a man who doesn't know anything, you're d.a.m.ned concerned about what happened tonight."

Ngenet ignored him, waiting.

"They all escaped. Their craft cleared Tiamat s.p.a.ce without damage." Jerusha saw the expression on his face turn into something that was not relief.

"All? You mean she went with them?" The words came out as though each one was alien on his tongue.

"That's right." She nodded, tightening her good hand over her other elbow, pinching off the nerve paths. "They took her off. You mean to tell me she really was an innocent bystander, a local?"