Authors: Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen (68 page)
The
bitterness increased a magnitude. Jerusha frowned as her own surprise deepened.
Moon rubbed her eyes, swaying where she stood; Jerusha remembered all that she
had been through, and how much of it had been for Gundhalinu’s sake.
“Sit down.
Pollux, bring us some tea.” Jerusha dismissed the waiting guard, touched Moon’s
elbow, turning her toward the seat along the wall. Moon looked surprise at her;
Jerusha felt a twinge of surprise at herself. Pollux moved away obediently
through the trajectories of official activity. Tor included herself in the rest
of the invitation: “Get me a refill, Polly.”
“You said
Arienrhod tried to kill you?” Jerusha sat down.
Moon
dropped heavily onto the seat, a little away from her; Tor stretched out fluidly
at the bench’s end. “She told the nobles I was a sibyl, and they tried to throw
me into the Pit.”
Tor sat up
straight, speechless for once.
“Her own
clone?” Jerusha felt her incredulity fade even as she said it.
Yes, that’s the Arienrhod I know. No competition.
“I’m not
Arienrhod!” Moon’s voice shook with denial. “I’m wearing her face, that’s all.”
She pulled a hand down over her own, her fingers clawing, as though she wanted
to strip it off. “And she knows it.”
Pollux
returned and passed around tea with the silent propriety of a butler. Jerusha
took a sip from her bowl, letting the scalding heat rise inside her head. It
could be a trick, another trick, her coming here. But for the life of her she
couldn’t imagine what purpose could lie behind it.
“They tried
to throw you in the Pit?” Tor prodded, staring at Moon’s throat. “What
happened?”
“It wasn’t
hungry.” Moon drank her tea, a strange emotion moving across her face. Tor
looked pained. “BZ—Inspector Gundhalinu came in with the Summers and made them let
me go.”
“You mean
that fishing pole with you was a real Blue?” Tor asked.
“He was
once.” Jerusha rested her heavy-helmeted head against the wall. “I hope he will
be again.”
“He never
stopped wanting to be anything else,” Moon said quietly. “Don’t let him give it
up, and throw everything away. Don’t let him blame himself for what happened.”
She gulped tea.
“I can’t
keep him from doing that.” Jerusha shook her head. “But I’ll make sure no one
else blames him for it.”
I can save his
career; but I can’t save him from himself ... or from you.
“Tell me,” her
resentment crystallized into accusation, “by all the gods, what do you see in
Starbuck, that bloody genocide—”
“
not any more.” Moon set her empty cup down on the bench, rattling it as the
genocide
registered. “And he never knew
about the mers. But you do.”
From you.
Jerusha glanced away abruptly.
“Yes. Your friend Ngenet—told me the truth about them.”
My friend Ngenet ... who trusted you, and
trusted me to know about you.
“Ngenet?”
Moon shook her own head, rubbed her face again. “You must have known it before.
Any sibyl knows the truth, you can’t deny that,” including the whole of the
Hegemony in the accusation. “You want to punish
land—for splattering blood on you while you stand and watch them die, with your
hands out begging for the water of life! And you want to punish me for knowing
the truth—that you’re punishing my world for your own guilt.”
Tor sat
listening with wide ears, but Jerusha made no move to get rid of her. She made
no move even to answer, cupping the Hegemonic seal of her belt buckle with cold
fingers; Moon watched her intently through the long moment. Jerusha frowned. “I
don’t make the laws. I just enforce them.” Wishing, as she said it, that she
hadn’t said that much.
Disappointment
showed in Moon’s eyes, but she didn’t press the argument. “
Summer; and there won’t be a Starbuck any more, when Winter’s gone. Arienrhod
did it to him, and he only let her do it because—because she was so like me.”
Moon glanced away. Jerusha felt a pang of sympathy at the girl’s sudden shame
and confusion. She stared at the trefoil tattoo. “
Queen’s plot. He was coming here when she caught us—he didn’t care what you did
to him, or me, as long as you kept our people from dying.” She looked up.
“If he
wants to make up for the last five years, it’ll take more than that. It’ll take
him the rest of his life.” Jerusha tasted venom.
“Do you
hate him that much?” Moon frowned. “Why? What did he ever do to you?”
“Listen,
Moon,” Tor said. “Everybody in Carbuncle has a reason to hate either Sparks
Dawntreader or Starbuck. And that includes me.”
“Then you
gave him a reason to hate you.”
Jerusha
looked away. “He repaid us all a hundred times over.”
Moon leaned
forward. “But at least you owe him a chance to prove he doesn’t belong to the
Queen now. He knows everything about the Source’s plan—couldn’t he testify for
you? He knows other things about the Source, things you could use—”
“Like
what?” interested in spite of herself.
“What
happened to the former Commander of Police? He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”
Jerusha
felt her mouth fall open. “The Source did it?”
“For the Queen.”
Moon nodded.
“Gods ...
oh, gods, I’d like to get that on tape!”
With a spare to play every night, to sing me to sleep.
“Enough to
drop the charges against us?”
Jerusha
refocused on Moon, saw determination running swift and deep in her strange
eyes; realized suddenly that she had been led blindfolded to this point—that
the girl was still fighting for her lover’s life, and her own.
You’ve learned the rules of civilization
well, girl.
Resentment struggled inside her, died stillborn. She looked at
the trefoil tattoo again.
Hell and
devils, how long can I
go on hating
her face, when
there’s no proof she ever deserved to be born with it?
“Will you
let me go and bring him here?” Moon half rose, anticipating her surrender.
“It may not
be that easy.”
Moon sat
down again, her body taut. “Why not?”
“I let it
be known all up and down the Street that Sparks was Starbuck, when I learned
about it. The Summers must already know who he is.”
And I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t know that I wanted it to happen that
way.
“They won’t let him leave the palace now.”
“He was
supposed to be all right! That’s the only reason I left him there!” Moon cried
her betrayal to the air; faces turned to stare at her across the room. Her eyes
glazed suddenly, vacant windows. Jerusha edged away from her, away from
contamination. “No, no!” Moon’s hands clenched into fists. “You can’t use him
and let him die! I did it all for him—you know that’s why I came here. Not for
you, not for the Change .... I don’t care about the Change, if it means he has
to die!” It had the sound of a threat. “Sparks isn’t going to die tomorrow—”
“Someone
has to,” Jerusha said uncomfortably, uncertainly, trying to pull her back into
the real world. “I know he’s your lover, sibyl—but the Change is bigger than
any one person’s wants or needs. The Change ritual is sacred; if the Sea Mother
doesn’t get her consort, there’ll be hell to pay from the crowds that came to
see it. Starbuck has to die.”
“Starbuck
has to die.” Moon echoed it, getting slowly to her feet. “I know. I know he
does.” She put her hand to her head, her face drawing pain, as though she
struggled against some compulsion. “But Sparks doesn’t! Commander.” She turned
back, her face still strained. “Will you help me find First Secretary Sirus? He
promised me,” she smiled suddenly, sardonically, “that if there was anything he
could do himself to help his son, he’d do it. And he will.”
“I can
contact him.” Jerusha nodded. “But I want to know why.”
“I have to
see someone, first.” Moon’s determination faltered. “Then I’ll tell you, and
you can tell him. Persipone, where’s Herne now?”
Tor raised
her eyebrows. “Back at the casino, I expect—
By
all the
gods,” with a kind of wonder, “I think
I
finally understand something in this conversation.” She grinned congenially at
Jerusha. “Eat your heart out, Blue.”
Jerusha lay
sprawled on the low couch in the den of her townhouse, one foot hanging,
tethering her to the floor,
or I might
just float up to the ceiling.
She smiled, watching the past day’s events
replay again on the inside of her eyelids; listening with half an ear to the
noisy celebration out in the alley, and letting herself believe that it was all
for her.
Well, hell, at least half of it
ought to be.
She loosened the seal of her uniform tunic a little further. For
once she had not taken it off immediately when she got home ... for once it
felt too good to be a Blue, and the Commander of Police.
She heard
Moon Dawntreader moan and sigh in her sleep in one of the darkened spare rooms.
Even as tired as the girl must be, she didn’t rest well in this place either.
Jerusha had not slept at all, and another day had begun already, somewhere
beyond the time-stopping walls of the city. But it didn’t matter; in another
few days shed be gone from this place forever. And for once she didn’t mind
reliving over and over the day just past, or anticipating the new one to come:
There was a message on her recorder asking—not ordering, asking—her to a
meeting with the Chief Justice and members of the Assembly. After breaking up
Arienrhod’s plot and capturing C’sunh, after making the Source too hot for any
world ... after all that, her black-and-blue career was alive and well again,
and so was she.
Then what
was she doing with a criminal asleep in her guest room? She sighed. By the Bastard
Boatman, the girl was no more a criminal than she was. And no more Arienrhod
than she was. Who cared if Moon had seditious thoughts about the Hegemony?
Gundhalinu was right—what could she do about them, once the off worlders were
gone? And although she wanted to deny it even to herself, the memory of the
mers and what the girl had said about punishment and guilt still gnawed at her
like an ulcer. Because it was true—it was, and she would never be able to deny
that again, or deny the hypocrisy of the government she served.
Well, damn it, what government was ever
perfect?
She had stopped Arienrhod, and she could tell herself that looking
the other way about Moon was her payment of conscience to Tiamat’s future. She
could even let it go for
let him be Moon’s grief, if he delivered the testimony she wanted. And if she
let him go, her conscience damn well ought to be clear forever ... But she knew
it wouldn’t be. She had seen too many things she should never have seen here,
and had too many people she had tried to categorize slip out of her
psychological shackles and overcome her resistance.
Some of my best friends are felons.
She smiled
painfully, pinched by sudden regret.
Miroe
...
good ..
bye
, Miroe.
She had not heard from him since that last death-cursed day they stood together
on the bloody beach ...
But that’s no
good-bye. Not remembering that scene.
She sat up on the couch, shaking out
cobwebs.
No—I can tell him that I’ve
found Moon, that she’s all right, and that Arienrhod is going to pay.
Yes, she
should call him now, while she had the time, before they cut communications,
before it was too late.
Call him,
Jerusha, and tell him goodbye.
She got up,
moved stiffly across the room to the phone, unexpected flutterings in the pit
of her stomach, as though she had
swallowed
moths. She
punched in the code, cursing the adolescent attack of nerves under her breath
as she waited for the call to go through.
“Hello?
Ngenet Plantation here.” The voice was absolutely clear, for the first time she
could ever remember. It was a woman’s voice; Jerusha heard the coldness come
into her own:
“This is
Commander PalaThion calling. Let me speak to Ngenet.”
“I’m sorry,
Commander, he’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone
where?”
Damn it, he can’t be smuggling
now!
“He didn’t
say, Commander.” The woman sounded more embarrassed than conspiratorial. “He’s
had a lot on his mind lately—we’ve all been getting ready for the Change here.
He went on board his boat a few days ago and left. He didn’t tell anyone why.”
“I see.”
Jerusha exhaled gradually.
“Is there
any message?”
“Yes. Three
things: Moon is safe. Arienrhod will pay. And tell him I—tell him I said
goodbye.”
The woman
repeated the message carefully. “I’ll tell him. A good voyage to you,
Commander.”
Jerusha
glanced down, glad that her face didn’t show. “Thank you. And good fortune to
all of you.” She switched off the speaker and turned away from it—seeing the
shell on the shrine table by the door, still sitting where it always had, its
broken spines a mute testimony to what had been, and was not to be.
It’s better this way ... better that he was
gone
. But her eyes were hot and brimming suddenly; she did not blink until
the reservoir of tears subsided, so that none escaped her control.