Authors: Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen (12 page)
“Input—”
An ocean of sand.
An infinity of beach, a shoreless dune-sea whose tides flowed endlessly
under the eternal wind ... Her ship moved over the sand in rippling undulation,
and she was not certain from where she sat, helmeted against the furnace of light,
high on its armored back, whether it was truly alive or not ...
“Input—”
An ocean of humanity.
The crowds surged around her on the corner of two streets, pushing and
dragging at her like treacherous undertow. Machines roared and clattered past
her, clogging the roadways, filling her nose with their bitter reek and
battering her ears .... A dark-faced stranger dressed all in brown, peaked hat,
shining boots, caught at her arm; raised his voice in an unknown language,
questioning. She saw his face change abruptly, and he let her go ...
“Input—”
An ocean of night.
An utter absence of light, and life ... a sense of macrocosmic age ...
an awareness of microcosmic activity ... the knowledge that she would never
penetrate its secret heart, no matter how often she came back and came back to
this midnight void of nothing, nothing at all ...
“... No further analysis!”
She heard the word echoing, felt
her head drop forward in release, caught her breath as the end of another
trance wrenched her back into her own world. She sat back on her knees,
relaxing the muscles of her body consciously, in a rising wave ... breathing
deeply and aware of each tingling response.
She opened
her eyes at last, to the reassuring presence of Danaquil Lu smiling at her from
the rough wooden chair on the other side of the chamber. She controlled her own
body now during the Transfer; they no longer had to hold her down, tying her to
the real world. She smiled back at him with weary pride, shifted to sit cross
legged on the woven mat.
Clavally
ducked in at the doorway, momentarily blotting out the puddle of sunlight that
warmed Moon’s back. Moon twisted to watch her enter the second pool of light
below the battered window frame; Clavally dropped her hand absently to smooth
Danaquil Lu’s always-rumpled brown hair. Danaquil Lu was a quiet, almost a shy
man, but he laughed easily at Clavally’s constant whimsies. He struck Moon as
being somehow ill at ease or out of place here on this island, in these rooms
chipped from a wall of porous rock. Where he did belong she couldn’t guess; but
sometimes she saw a longing for it in his eyes. Sometimes she caught him
looking at her, too, with an expression on his face that she couldn’t name—as
though he had seen her somewhere before. There were ugly scars on his neck and
the side of his face, as though some beast had clawed him.
“What did
you see?” Clavally asked the question that was almost a ritual in itself. To
help her learn to control the Transfer, to master the rituals of body and mind
that guided a sibyl, they asked her questions with predictable
answers—questions they had been asked themselves as a part of their own
training. Moon had learned that she never knew what words she would speak in
response to a seeker’s questions. Instead she was swept away into a vision:
into a pit of blackness as vast as death ... into a vibrant dream world
somewhere in the middle of another reality. A mystical strand bound each
question to a separate dream, and so Clavally or Danaquil Lu could guide her
Transfer experience, lessen the terrifying alien ness with predictions of what
she would see.
“I went to
the
shaking out the shadows that still rattled in her memory. The first things they
had taught her after her initiation were the mental blocks and disciplined
concentration that would keep her sane, that would keep her from overhearing
all the thousand hidden thoughts of the Lady’s all-seeing mind, or being swept
away into the Lady’s rapture every time anyone around her spoke a question.
“Why is it that we go there more than anywhere else? It’s like drowning.”
“I don’t
know,” Clavally said. “Maybe we are drowning—they say that those who drown have
visions, too.”
Moon moved
uneasily. “I hope not.”
Laughter.
Clavally crouched down beside Danaquil Lu, rubbing his shoulders with
absentminded tenderness; his necklace of shell beads rattled musically. The
damp cold at night in these stone rooms left him stiff and aching, but he never
complained. Maybe this is why ... Moon’s hands tightened over her knees as she
watched them together.
“Your
control is fine, Moon.” Danaquil Lu smiled, half at her, half at Clavally’s
hands. “You improve with every Transfer—you have a very strong will.”
Moon pushed
herself to her feet, “I guess I need some air,” her voice suddenly sounding
feeble and thin even to her. She went quickly out the doorway, knowing air
wasn’t really what she needed.
She half
ran down the path that led toward the inlet where their boats were; took the
branching track that rose along the blue-green, windy headland above the
blue-green sea. Breathing hard, she threw herself down in the long, matted salt
grass, pulling her feet in as she looked back toward the south-facing cliff where
she had lived like a bird in an aerie the past months. She gazed out over the
sea again, seeing in the blue-clouded distance the ragged spine of the
whose small sister this was ... remembering with all the vividness of a
Transfer dream the moment of the Lady’s decision that had torn her life and
sorry! Her fist struck hard on the damp grass; opened, strengthless.
She lifted
her arm to look at the thin white line along her wrist where Clavally had cut
it, as she had cut her own, with a metal crescent long months ago. Danaquil Lu
had pressed their wrists together as their blood mingled and dripped down,
while he sang a hymn to the Sea Mother here on this very spot. Here,
overlooking the Sea, she had been consecrated as they hung the barbed trefoil
around her neck; welcomed into a new life as they all sipped in turn from a cup
of brine; inita ted with that bond of blood into this holy fellowship. Shaking
with fear, she had grown suddenly hot and cold and dizzy as she felt the Lady’s
presence come over her ... collapsed in a faint between them, waking the next
day still weak and feverish, filled with awe. She had become one of the chosen
few: From the scars on their wrists, it was clear that Clavally and Danaquil Lu
had initiated only half a dozen others before her. She cupped the trefoil in
her hand, remembering
its barbed points.
Death to love a sibyl
... to be a
sibyl ...
But not to
love, and be, a sibyl: She looked back at the cliffs jealousy, imagined
Clavally and Danaquil Lu sharing love in her absence.
thin white line on the surface of her mind now, like the white line along her
wrist. Time and the memories of a lifetime had swept away her hurt like a wave
sweeping footprints from the sand, leaving a bright mirror, a reflection of
love and need. She had always loved him, she would always need him. She could
never give him up.
Clavally
and Danaquil Lu were pledged, and the knowledge was like a small demon trapped
inside her chest. To islanders sex was a thing as natural as growing up, but
they were private about their private lives; so she had spent many hours in
dutiful, solitary meditation, that too easily bled into daydreams of envious
longing. And one of the things she had learned about sibyls was that they were
not more than human: Sorrow and anger and all the petty frustrations of life
still grew from the seeds of her dedication, wrong still came out of the best
intentions. She still laughed, and cried, and ached for the touch of him ...
“Moon?”
She twisted
guiltily at Clavally’s voice behind her.
“Are you
all right?” Clavally settled beside her on the grass, putting a hand on her
arm.
Moon felt a
sudden surge of emotion, beyond the surge of energy any question set free in
her mind now—misery craving company. She controlled it, barely. “Yes,” gulping,
“but sometimes I ... miss Sparks.”
“Sparks?
Your cousin.” Clavally nodded. “Now I remember. I saw you together. You said
you wanted to be together forever. But he didn’t come with you?”
“He did!
But the Lady—turned him away. All our lives we planned to do this together ...
and then She turned him away.”
“But you
still came here.”
“I had to.
I’ve waited half my life to be a sibyl. To matter in the world.” Moon shifted,
hugging her knees, as a cloud abruptly darkened the sun. Below them the sea
turned sullen gray in its shadow. “And he couldn’t understand that. He said
stupid things, hateful things. He—went away, to Carbuncle! He went away angry.
I don’t know if he’ll ever come back.” She looked up, meeting Clavally’s eyes,
seeing the sympathy and understanding that she had hidden from for so long, and
realizing that she had been wrong to hide—to carry the burden alone. “Why
didn’t the Lady choose us both? We’ve always been together! Doesn’t She know
that we’re the same?”
Clavally
shook her head. “She knows that you’re not, Moon. That was why She chose only
you. There was something inside
there in the cave She heard a false note from his.”
“No!” Moon
looked out across the water toward the
The sky was massing with clouds for another rain squall. “I mean—there’s
nothing wrong with
Is it because his father wasn’t a Summer? Because he likes technology? Maybe
the Lady thought he wasn’t a true believer. She doesn’t take Winters to be
sibyls.” Moon fingered the lank grass, searching the tangled strands for an
explanation.
“Yes, She
does.”
“She does?”
“Danaquil
Lu is a Winter.”
“He is?”
Moon’s head came up. “But—how? Why? I always heard ... everybody says that they
don’t believe. And that they’re not ... like us,” she finished lamely.
“The Lady
works in strange ways. There is a kind of well at the heart of Carbuncle, that
opens down to the sea from the Queen’s palace. On his first visit to court,
Danaquil Lu crossed over the bridge that spans the well—and the Sea Mother
called up to him, and told him that he must become a sibyl.”
Clavally
smiled sorrowfully. “People are sweet and sour fruit together, wherever you
find them. The Lady picks the ones that best suit Her tastes, and She doesn’t
seem to care whether they worship Her, or anyone.” Her eyes turned distant; she
glanced up at the rooms in the cliff face. “But few Winters even try to become
sibyls, because they’re taught that it’s madness, or superstitious fakery. They
rarely even see sibyls, sibyls are forbidden to enter Carbuncle.
The off
worlders hate them for some reason; and whatever the off worlders hate, the
Winters hate too. But they believe in the power of the Lady’s retribution.”
Lines deepened in her face. “They have a pole, that ends in a collar of spikes,
so that no one is ‘contaminated’ by a sibyl’s blood ...”
Moon
thought of Daft Nairy ... and of Danaquil Lu. Her hand touched the trefoil
tattoo at the base of her neck, beneath the ivory wool of her sweater.
“Danaquil Lu—”
“—was
punished, driven out of Carbuncle. He can never go back; at least while the
Snow Queen rules. I met him during one of my circuits through the islands. I
think, since we’ve been together, he’s been happy ... or at least content. And
I’ve learned many things from him.” She glanced down—suddenly, unexpectedly,
looking like a girl. “I know it’s probably wrong of me, but I’m glad they sent
him into exile.”
“Then you
know how I feel.” Clavally nodded, smiling down. She pushed back her parka
sleeve, exposing the long-healed scars on her wrist. “I don’t know why we were
chosen ... but we weren’t chosen because we’re perfect.”
“I know.”
Moon’s mouth twitched. “But if it’s not because he’s interested in technology,
how could
“—when you
think there couldn’t be anything more perfect than the lover you remember?”
A sheepish
nod.
“When I
first saw you together, I had a feeling—after a while you do—that if you came
here you would be chosen. You felt right to me. But Sparks ... there was an
unsettled ness
“I don’t
understand.”
“You said
that he left angry. You think he left as much for the wrong reasons as for the
right ones—that he did it to hurt you? That he blamed you for your success, and
his failure.”
“But I
would have felt all those things too, if he’d been chosen instead—”
“Would
you?” Clavally looked at her. “Maybe any of us would all the good will in the
world can’t keep us from swallowing the fishhook baited with envy. But
what happened. You would only have blamed yourself.”