Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“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—”

“Sparks isn’t Starbuck… 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 Sparks for killing mers on off worlder 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. “Sparks isn’t Starbuck! He wasn’t Starbuck in 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. “Sparks was the one who told me about the 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.