Authors: Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen (71 page)
She watched
their reactions spread like ripple rings colliding on a water surface; tried to
guess whether it was genuine—whether the Assembly knew, whether the civil
officials did, whether she was the only human being in this room who had been
blind to the truth ... But if any of them were faking their amazement, they
were good at it. The murmurs of protest rose along the table.
“Are you
trying to tell us,” Hovanesse said, “that someone claims we’ve been
exterminating an intelligent race?”
She nodded,
her eyes downcast as she spoke, treading lightly. “Not knowingly, of course.”
In her mind she saw the bodies on the beach:
but killing them just the same
. “I’m sure no one in this room, no
member of the Hegemonic Assembly, would let anything like that go on.” She
glanced deliberately at the oldest Wearer of the Badge among them, a man in his
sixties who just might be left over from long enough ago. “But someone knew
once, because we know about the water of Life.” If he did know, he wasn’t
letting her see it on his face; she wondered suddenly why she wanted to.
“So you are
suggesting,” one of the other Kharemoughis demanded, “that our ancestors
consciously buried the truth, in order to get the water of life for
themselves?”
She heard
the extra grimness that weighed down ancestors, and realized that she had made
a misstep. Criticizing a Kharemoughi’s ancestors was like accusing one of her
own people of incest.
But she
nodded, firmly, stubbornly, “Someone’s did, yes, sir.”
Hovanesse
took a sip from his glass, said heavily, “Those are exceptionally ugly and
unpleasant charges to bring up at a time like this, Commander PalaThion.”
She nodded
again. “I know, Your Honor. But I can’t think of a more appropriate audience
for them. If this is true—”
“Who made
the accusation? What’s his proof?”
“An off
worlder named Ngenet; he has a land-grant plantation here on Tiamat.”
“Ngenet?”
The Director of Communications touched his ear in derision. “That renegade?
He’d claim anything to make the Hegemony look bad. Everyone in the government
knows that. The only attention he deserves from you, Commander, is a jail
cell.”
Jerusha
smiled briefly. “I once considered it. But he claims this information was given
to him by a sibyl; it would be easy enough to I corroborate by asking another
one.”
“I wouldn’t
degrade the honor of my ancestors by such an insulting act!” one of the assemblymen
murmured.
“It seems
to me,” Jerusha leaned forward again, “that the future of this world’s people,
human and nonhuman, ought to be a lot more important than the reputation of
Kharemoughis who were dust a millennium ago. If a wrong’s being done, let’s
admit it and correct it. If we wink at mass murder here we’re as bad as the
Snow Queen herself. Worse—splattered with the blood of innocent beings by the
slaves and lackeys who only obey our demands, while we punish them for our
guilt by keeping them in the
Fke
Age!” Stunned by the
words she heard come out of her own mouth, she remembered abruptly who had put
them into her mind.
The silence
of the grave met her on every side, and bore her back down into her seat. She
sat still, very aware of her own breathing, and of then—goodwill draining away,
emptying out of this husk of a room. “Sorry, gentlemen. I guess I—spoke out of
turn. I know this is a hard accusation to face; that’s why I’ve had so damn
much trouble knowing what to do about it myself, whether to file a report—”
“Don’t file
a report,” Hovanesse said.
She looked
up at him, questioning; back along the table’s length at the brittle anger of
the Kharemoughis, and the resentful anger of the Newhavenese.
You damn fool! What made you think they’d
want to look Truth straight in the face, any more than you did?
“The
Assembly will take up the matter after we leave Tiamat. When we’ve made our
decision, the
“You will
question a sibyl, at least.” She twisted her watchband below the table’s edge,
longing for a handful of iestas.
“We have
one among us, on the ships,” not entirely answering the question.
I pity the poor bleeder, with a clientele like
that.
She wondered
in her heart whether this one question worth asking would ever be asked again.
“In any
case,” Hovanesse frowned at her silence, “whatever is decided won’t have to
concern you, Jerusha; you’ll spend the rest of your career, and your life,
light-years away from Tiamat. Just like we all will. We appreciate your
concern, your honesty in speaking your mind. But the question and Tiamat become
purely academic for us from here on.”
“I suppose
so, Your Honor.”
And even the rain
doesn’t
fall
if it doesn’t
fall on you
. She got to her feet again and saluted them all stiffly. “Thank
you for your time, and for asking me here. But I’ve got to be getting back to
my duties before they become academic, too.” She turned without waiting for a
sign of dismissal and went quickly out of the room.
She had
gotten as far as the hallway before Hovanesse’s voice called her to a stop. She
turned back, half hot and half cold, saw t him coming after her alone. She
couldn’t quite read his face.
“You didn’t
give the Assembly the opportunity to give you your new assignments, Commander.”
His eyes castigated her for her tactlessness and ingratitude before the
Assembly members; but he said nothing more.
“Oh.” She
took the printout automatically from his hand, with fingers that felt nothing.
Oh, gods, what’s my fortune to be?
“Aren’t you
going to look at it?” It was not a casual inquiry, or a friendly one, and she
felt the numbness spread.
She almost
refused, but some perverse part of her would not ignore the challenge. “Of
course.” She unsealed the flimsy paper and let it fall open, her eyes striking
the page randomly. The Tiamatan force was being split up, as she had expected,
reassigned to several different worlds. Mantagnes had been given another chief
inspectorship. And she ... she ... her eyes found her own name at last and she
read .... “There’s been a mistake.” She felt the perfect calm of perfect
disbelief. She read it again: a sector command, almost the equal of her
position here. But at
Syllagong, on Big Blue. “There’s nothing there but a cinder desert.”
“And the
penal colony. Extensive mineral mining goes on there, Commander. It’s of
considerable importance to the Hegemony. There are plans for starting an
additional colony; that’s why they’re expanding the force there.”
“Damn it,
I’m a police officer. I don’t want to run a prison camp.” The paper sighed as
her hands tightened. “Why am I being given this? Is it what I just said in
there? It isn’t my fault if the—”
“This was your
original assignment, Commander. But because of your accomplishments, your rank
has been raised to a sector command.”
He said the
words deliberately, oozing the smugness of a man who lived by influence and
prior knowledge. “Rehabilitating offenders is just as important as apprehending
them, after all. Someone has to do it, and you’ve proven you can handle
a—difficult position.”
“A dead-end
position!” To argue was only to humiliate herself further, but she fought a
losing battle with her temper. “I’m the Commander of Police for this entire
planet. I’ve just been given a commendation. I don’t have to stand by and let
my career die!”
“Of course
you don’t,” he patronized. “You can take it up with the Assembly
members—although you probably won’t earn much sympathy after the disgusting and
outrageous charges you just made in there.” His dark eyes grew darker. “Let’s
be blunt about this, shall we, Commander? You and I both know you owe your
place at the top to the Queen’s interference. The only reason you were made an
inspector in the first place was merely to humor her. This new position is more
than you deserve. You know as well as I do that the men under your command here
never accepted taking orders from a woman.”
But
that was Arienrhod’s doing! And it’s changing now, changed already—
“Morale
was terrible, as Chief Inspector Mantagnes frequently reported to me. You are
neither needed nor wanted on the force. Whether you take this assignment or
resign is up to you, but it’s all the same to us.” He locked his hands behind
his back and stood before her, as immovable as a wall. She remembered the
glowing platitudes he had mouthed about her so short a time ago.
You set me up for this, you bastard. I saw it
coming. I knew it was coming, but after yesterday I thought—I thought—
“I’ll fight this, Hovanesse.” Her
voice trembled with rage, half the rage turning back on herself for letting it
happen. “The Queen couldn’t ruin me, and neither will you.” But she has,
Jerusha; she has ... She turned and walked away from him again, and this time
he did not call her back.
Jerusha
left the Court Building and started back down the uncongested Blue Alley toward
police headquarters. (Even in Festival time, the carousers avoided this piece
of the city.) Her first and only thought was to go to her men, tell them her
problem, see if she could get their support. It was true, then—feeling toward
her was changing, because of yesterday; she had seen it in almost every face.
But had it changed enough? If she had the time now, she might be given a fair
chance to prove that she could hold their respect as well as any man. But she
didn’t have that much time. Did she even have time to try to get them behind
her now? And even if she did ... was it worth it?
She found
herself standing alone in the alley before the station house: that ancient,
hideous fossil which had grown so familiar. No other building, no other post
would ever be quite so hated—or, she suddenly realized, quite so important—in
her life. But wherever she went, if she went in the uniform she wore now, she
would always be an outsider, would always have to be fighting not simply to do
a good job, but to prove that she even had the right to try. And there would
always be another Hovanesse, another Mantagnes, who would never accept her, and
try to drive her away. Gods, did she really want to spend the rest of her life
that way?
No
... not if she could
find something else to do with it that meant as much to her as this job,
something she believed in as much. But there was nothing else . nothing. Beyond
this job she had no life, no goal, no future. She went on past the station
house, on to the alley’s end, and out into the river of celebration.
of Starbuck’s suite like a stranger, sleepless, aimless. No longer a part of
them—but no longer free to leave. Both the public and the private entrances to
the suite were watched now—not by the Queen’s guards, but by Summers furious
over her attempt to stop the Change. They were guarding Arienrhod, too—and somehow
her plot had been overthrown. But when he had tried to ask them about Moon, and
whether she had been the one who told them, they didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell
him. And when he had tried to get them to let him out, or to convince them that
he was only a Summer like they were, they had laughed at him, and driven him
back into the room with harpoons and knives: They knew who he was; Arienrhod
had told them. And they would keep him here until the sacrifice.
Arienrhod
would not let him go. If her dreams were ruined, then his would be, too. He
would die tomorrow if she died; she had bound him to her as inescapably as they
would be bound together when they were thrown into the sea. She was the Sea
incarnate, and Starbuck was Her consort, and they would be reborn on the new
tide ... but as new bodies with fresh, untainted souls—Summer souls. That was
the way it had been since the beginning of time, and even though the off
worlders had twisted it to suit their own purposes, it had endured, and always
would. Who was he to change Change? Moon had tried to save him from it, but his
fate had been stronger than them both. He tried not to think about what had
happened between Arienrhod and Moon after he had been taken away—when Moon must
have learned the truth about herself at last Even if Moon had somehow escaped
Arienrhod, there was no way she could come back to him now. He could only be
grateful that he had been given one last hour with her, a condemned man’s last
comfort . and the final irony of a wasted life.
He rummaged
in a gilded chest, found the bundle of clothes he had worn when he first came
to the palace, and brought them out. He spread them carefully on the soft
surface of the carpet, finding at their core the beads he had bought himself on
his second day in the city ... and his flute. He laid the flute aside, took off
the clothes he wore, and pulled on the loose, heavy pants and the rainbow shirt
that belonged with the beads, dressing as though for a ritual. He took up his
father’s medal from the dresser top when he finished, hung it about his neck in
completion. He picked the flute up gently and sat with it on the edge of the
heavy-legged reclining couch.