Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“OYARZABAL: Just the Summers, goddamn it, Perse. Not the Winters, they’ll be safe; the Queen wants it this way. STAR HIKER: 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, Pollux.”

Jerusha listened her skin crawling at the nasal dirge of words, until their meaning coalesced in her mind, catalyzed by two: the Queen. “Holy gods — I’ve found it! I’ve found it! Sergeant!” Shouting as she turned, she found him already standing at her elbow. “Contact the dozen men closest to Persipone’s — tell them to get over there immediately and seal that place off! Mantagnes—”

“What’s this all about, Commander?” She couldn’t decide whether he was indignant or frightened.

“It’s about life and death.” She dropped her cloak on the floor, reaching to check her stunner. “It’s about Arienrhod buying her own life with the death of half this city, or I’m not the Commander of Police.” She watched his jaw fall. “Unit Pollux — your prayers and mine have been answered.” She clapped its metallic shoulder. jjf1 “Gods, just let it be in time!”

“Please help Tor, Commander. I have grown — attached to her.”

She nodded, not quite believing shed heard that. “Mantagnes, ii you’re always bitching about how you want more action. Let’s go find it.”

“You’re going up there yourself, Commander?” more astonished than critical.

Grinning now, she said, “I wouldn’t miss this for sainthood.”

“So, sibyl, you’ve threatened our Queen.” A man spoke at last; Moon felt the group stare of the angry nobles burn the tattoo into her throat like a brand. “And you’re forbidden to come into the city. We have been given the privilege of seeing that you never do either of those things again.”

Moon backed toward the bridge span, fighting the memory of what had happened here in the city to Danaquil Lu. “I’m going to leave the palace. If you touch me, I’ll contaminate you. Don’t try to stop me—” Her voice slid.

“We won’t try to stop you, sibyl,” he said, his voice hungry and blurred. “Cross the bridge; go ahead.” He grinned, and it turned his thin face into a death’s-head. They were all smiling suddenly, with drug-drunken, heedless malice — people who had been celebrating the end of their world, and knew who to blame for it. He took something out of a hidden place in his long outer robe and held it up; it looked like a dark finger. “Cross the Pit.”

Moon covered her control box with her hand, staring at the thing he held; not sure what it was, but only that it was a threat to her. But she had to cross the bridge; she had to try. There was no other way. With clumsy hands she reached up to unfasten her gold stitched velvet cloak. She folded it in threes, which was the Lady’s sacred number, and stepped toward the windy lip of the abyss in a defiant ritual. The cape was only a hindrance on her back; but it was a worthy gift to the Sea Mother, if She lay hungry below. Hungry for tribute, or hungry for sacrifice…

Lady, guide me! Moon pitched the cloak outward with a prayer, yl heard the laughter of the nobles behind her. It bellied out in the cross drafts drifted and circled like a plummeting fisher bkd into the shaft’s green darkness.

Moon pressed the first button in the sequence at her wrist, and started out onto the bridge. The Winters watched and muttered, but did nothing. Moon sounded another note, walked on, not even breathing. At the far end of the bridge more nobles waited; she tried not to see them clearly… not to look down, not to listen to the demon dirge around her or the clamoring of fears inside her head…

But as she neared the center of the span the catch-spell of the sibyl’s song invaded her again, slowing her, lulling her fears, dulling her instinct for survival. No! She froze, letting her terror rise up and counterattack before the song could snare her mind again. But even as she stopped moving, she saw the Winters ahead all holding the same hollow fingers, raising them to their lips — whistles! To control the winds… And now at last she understood: They were turning the winds against her; this was how she would die, without a human hand shedding her blood.

Moon threw herself flat on the bridge span as the choir voice of the whistles collided and smashed her circle of quiet air. The winds swept over her, tearing at her. But in the middle of the wind lay the sibyl song — like the clear air in a hurricane’s eye, the clarity of a strange madness filling her mind. Hypnotized, paralyzed, she plunged through into a refuge that lay in some other plane of existence…

Why? Why does it call me here? “What’s the answer?” she heard her own voice screaming wildly. “What’s the answer?” You can answer any question, except one, Elsevier had told her. Not What is Life?” not Is there a God?… The one question she was forbidden to answer was Where is your source point And in this moment, teetering at the eternity’s edge of insanity or death, she knew that at last it had been answered, that she had been chosen again by the power that lived in her mind: Sourcepoint, fountainhead, wellspring… here, here, here! Below this shaft that plunged into the sea, below this pinpoint city driven into a map of time, as secret as stone beneath the guardian se asking of this water world, lay the sibyl machine. And she alone would know. She felt her mind give way under the final assault of knowledge, and fall into the well of truth; cried out as she felt her body lose control to follow it down…

Like a startled dreamer she came into herself again, lying on the bridge span, gasping loudly in the quiet air. The quiet air… She pressed her hand over her mouth, pushed up slowly onto her knees. There was no wind at all; only a peaceful stirring and sighing around her. The Winters stood gape-faced on the far edge of the abyss, then — whistles dangling from strengthless fingers. She dared to look away, past the wind curtains hanging slack in a becalmed sea, to the storm walls beyond. The walls were closed, shutting off the flow of the cold crosswinds from the outer world, sealing off their only access to the well at Carbuncle’s heart, and to her. She sank forward again, pressing her forehead against the surface of the span in silent gratitude.

She climbed unsteadily to her feet, made her way on across the bridge. She moved slowly, for the sake of the watchers, for the sake of her uncertain legs. The Winters’ expressions mixed awe and terror now; she set her face in grim defiance, willing them to let her pass.

And some fell back, but there were some who turned angrier, more hate-filled and reckless at the sight of a Summer wearing the face of then: Queen, wielding the power of a goddess. And among them she saw the iron pole crowned with a halo of metal thorns, the witch collar that had torn open Danaquil Lu’s throat. The collar came forward to meet her and keep her from stepping off the bridge. “Kneel down, sibyl, or go into the Pit!” The jewel-turba ned woman who held it thrust it at her; she took a step back, her hands knotting at her sides.

“Let me past or I’ll—” As she spoke she saw them turn, heard the processing echoes of many footsteps coming down the entry corridor toward the hall. And as suddenly the crescent of space behind the nobles began to fill with human figures — but this time they wore homespun and kleeskin: Summers! Their faces were as murderous as any Winter face had been until a second before; they carried knives and harpoons, and the faces looked at her, alone on the bridge, without changing.

“There she is! It’s the Queen!”

Moon saw the one face that didn’t belong with the rest, one man working his way forward among them with desperate determination.