Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

His head came up. “Moon!” He started toward her.

She put out her arms. He came into the room where she stood waiting; the rest of the world ceased to exist beyond the meeting point of their hearts.

“Oh, Moon! Moon…” Sparks breathed the words against her ear, stopped her own words with another kiss.

“Sparkie…” She tasted tears.

“Sparks.” They looked up together, at Sirus’s voice.

“I must be leaving you now. Now that you’re in — safe hands.” He smiled his sorrow.

Sparks nodded, separated himself from Moon slowly and went back to his father’s side. Moon watched them embrace for a last time, feeling her own heart torn, before his father went back out into the alley noise. PalaThion closed the door, looked at Sparks expressionlessly.

He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’ll tell you what I know about the Source. That’s what you want, isn’t it, to let me go… that’s all you want?” as if he didn’t really believe it.

She nodded, but her face was strained.

“Look, Commander—” He shut his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re doing this… except I know it’s not done for me. But I want you to know I’m sorry—” Hastily, “I know it doesn’t do any good,, it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t even mean anything. But I’m sorry.” He spread his hands.

“It means something, Dawntreader.” PalaThion looked as though she were surprised to realize that it actually did.

“There’s one thing I can do for you, anyway,” abruptly. He strode to the far end of the room, pried the ugly geometric clock-face out of the wall. Moon watched, incredulous, as he threw it to the floor and stepped on it. He smiled, rubbing his hands together. “If you’ve hated this place for no reason — that was the reason: a subsonic transmitter in the clock.” He came back to Moon’s side, hung onto her hand as though he were afraid she would disappear. “There might be others I don’t know about.”

The awareness of years of needless agony, of questioning her own sanity… the awareness that it had finally come to an end, filled PalaThion’s face. “I always meant to make this museum into a real room again. But somehow I just never got around to it…” Dreary disillusionment settled in again, as if it had never really left her. “Well, Moon. You got everything you came here to get; I’m glad, for somebody’s sake. After Sparks gives his testimony, the two of you cease to exist as far as I’m concerned. That’ll be the end of the problems you’ve caused for me… I just hope you can solve your own now.” She went past them and into the back rooms of the apartment.

“What did she mean?” Sparks turned back.

Moon shook her head, not meeting his eyes. “All that happened in the last year, I suppose.” Five years. “And all that’s going to happen, after the Change.” She looked away at the mask of the Summer Queen.

“What’s that?” He followed her glance.

“The mask of the Summer Queen.” She felt him stiffen and pull away.

“Yours? You won it?” His voice thickened. “No! You couldn’t have — you couldn’t have won, unless you cheated.”

Moon saw herself reflected, saw Arienrhod reflected in his eyes. “I won because I was meant to! I had to win — and not for myself!”

“I suppose you did it for Tiamat! That’s what she always said, too.” He stood away from her.

“I’m a sibyl, Sparks, and that’s why I won! And yes, I care about Tiamat — and Arienrhod does too. She’s seen more of what this world was, and became, and will stop being again, than anyone else has… And she cared about you; you can’t deny that.”

Sparks looked down abruptly; Moon felt different kinds of pain start in her chest.

PalaThion came back into the room wearing her uniform; went on past them and out, without saying anything more. The door opened and closed behind her, cutting them off again from the celebration of the world outside. Moon fingered the trailing streamers of the Summer Queen’s mask. Her mask… my mask.

“Sparks, please, believe that it’s right. My becoming Queen is part of something much greater, much more important, than either you or me. I can’t explain it to you now—” She knew, with misery, that he had never been meant to know; that he had always been the enemy to the shapeless sentience that guided her. “But we have to stop the off world exploitation of Tiamat. When I was off world I met a sibyl on Kharemough; I learned that there are sibyls on all the worlds of the Old Empire — the whole reason they exist is to help worlds rebuild and relearn. I can answer any question.” She saw his eyes widen, and change.

“And while I was on Kharemough I began to see what you always saw, about progress, technology, the magic of what the off worlders do, and how it isn’t magic to them. They understand so much more, they don’t have to be afraid of disease, or broken bones, or childbirth. Your mother wouldn’t have died. We have a right to live that way too, or there wouldn’t be sibyls on this world.”

She saw hunger in his eyes, for what she had seen that he would never see. But he only said, “Our people are happy the way they are. If they start reaching for power, wanting what they don’t have, they’ll end up like the Winters. Like us.”

“What’s wrong with us? Nothing!” She shook her head. “We want knowledge, we’re asking for our birthright. That’s all. The off worlders want us to think it’s wrong to be dissatisfied with what we have. But it’s no worse than being self-satisfied with it. Change isn’t evil — change is life. Nothing’s all good, or all bad. Not even Carbuncle. It’s like the sea, it has its tides, they ebb and flow… What you choose to do with your life doesn’t matter, unless you have the right to choose anything. We don’t have any choice. And the mers don’t even have the right to live.” And they have to live, they’re the key to everything.

Sparks grimaced. “All right, you’ve made your point! Someone should try to change it. But why us?” His hand closed over his medal. “You know… my father said he could get us off Tiamat. He could arrange for us to go to Kharemough. It would be so easy…”

“They don’t need us on Kharemough. They need us here.” Seeing Kharemough, the Thieves’ Market, the night sky: It would be so easy. Even if we can plant the seeds here, we’ll never see the final harvest, we’ll never know whether we lost or won… “And we owe something to both places that we can only pay back here.” Her voice grew dark.

“Some things can never be repaid.” Sparks moved to the window; Moon saw someone outside wave in passing. “And having to stay here, in Carbuncle, in the palace—” He broke off. “I don’t know if I can stand it, Moon. I can’t start over, in the same place where I was—”

“Look at the people out there. This is the Mask Night — the night of transition. No one is what they were, or will be… we’re not anything, our potential is infinite. And when the masks come off, they peel away the layers of our sins, and leave us free to forget, and start over.” And to prove to the sibyl mind that you are as I see you, and not wearing a death mask.

She went to stand beside him. “After tonight nothing will be the same. Not even Carbuncle. The Summers are coming here, and the future is trying to. It will be a new world, not Arienrhod’s.” But it will be hers too; it always will be. Knowing it, she didn’t say it. “And I promise you I’ll never set foot in the palace again.” And I’ll never tell anyone why.

He looked over at her in surprise; when he believed what he saw, relief freed his face. But still he sighed, and still she felt the space between them. “It’s not enough. I need time — time to forget; time to believe in myself again… and believe in us. One night isn’t enough. Maybe a lifetime won’t be enough.” He turned to the window again.