Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

Moon looked with him, not able to keep looking at him, letting the crowd blur and swim out of focus, oily colors on a water surface. It never rains here. It ought to rain… there are never any rainbows. “I’ll wait,” biting off the words, to keep from choking on them. “But it won’t take that long.” She found his hand on the windowsill squeezed it. “Tonight it’s my duty to be happy.” Her mouth quirked at the irony. “This should have been our Festival, to carry with us in our memories forever. It’s the last Festival; and we will remember it. Do you want to go out there and end our lives the way we were meant to? Maybe, if we tried, we could make tonight one we want to remember forever.”

He nodded; a smile teetered on his face. “We could try.”

She looked back at the Summer Queen’s mask, saw it overlain by faces, all the many lives that had sacrificed so much to make it hers. One face—”But first… I have to tell someone good-bye.” She bit her lip, a counterpain.

“Who?” Sparks followed her eyes.

“A — an off worlder A police inspector. I escaped from the nomads with him. He’s in the hospital now.”

“A Blue?” He tried to take back the tone of his voice. “Then he’s more than just a Blue: a friend.”

“More than just a friend,” faintly. She faced him, waiting for him to understand.

“More than… ?” He frowned suddenly, and she saw his face flush. “How could you—?” His voice broke, like a stick snapping. “How could you… How could I. We. Us…”

She looked down. “I was lost in the storm, and he was my sea anchor. And I was his. When someone loves you more than you love yourself, you can’t help—”

“I know.” He let his anger out in a sigh. “But what about — now, you and him? And me?”

She ran her fingers down the colored front of her nomad’s tunic. “He didn’t ask me for forever.” Because he knew he couldn’t. “He always knew that no one would ever come before you, or come between you and me, or take your place for me.” Even though he would have tried; wanted to try; did. She felt his face trying now to come between Sparks’s pinched face and her own. “No one!” blinking hard. “He — helped me to find you.” He gave up everything, gave me so much; and what did I give him? Nothing. “Then he left me, asking nothing else. I have to know, to be sure, he’ll — be all right, when he leaves here.”

Sparks laughed; the sound was raw in his throat. “What about us? Will we be all right, when they’re gone? When we’re the ones who get stuck, when we have to live on with their memories looking over our shoulders, reminding us how we broke our pledge, our promise — and broke it, and broke it?”

“We’ll make another. For our reborn souls — tomorrow.” After tonight. She picked up the Summer Queen’s mask. After the dawn. “But I think we never broke the old one, in our hearts.”

He kissed her once before she put the mask on again.

“What about a mask for you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t need one. I’ve already taken mine off.”

“Well, this sure’s hell’s not how I imagined spendin’ Mask Night.” Tor interrupted herself to fill her mouth with another sugary, alcohol soaked drunken-cake from the sack in her hand, doing her best to deaden body and mind against the coming end of the world. She pulled her mask back into place, hanging onto Pollux’s stalwart bulk, an island of comfort in the thinning Festival crowd. “Not with nothin’ but a hunk of cold metal to cozy up to, and a future of cleaning fish. Hell, I get seasick in the bathtub. And I hate fish, goddamn it!” Shouting it.

“You’re not the only one, sister!” A masked figure waved mutual disgust, disappeared after its chosen through a battered warehouse door, searching for a little privacy. Tor looked after them enviously; Pollux stared noncommittally down the Street. Nearly everyone who was going to had paired off for the night by now.

“I’m sorry things turned out badly for you, Tor,” Pollux said unexpectedly. “If you want to spend your time with a person, I do not mind.”

Tor glanced back at him, with the slightly irrational conviction that he would mind very much. “Nah. I can do that any night… but this’s the last night I’ll see you.” He didn’t answer.

They had made a sentimental journey down to the docks and warehouses of the lower city, because she had decided that she would rather spend the last night of her world in the places of her childhood, her origins: remembering her youth, reliving the days when she had never even aspired to the things she had ultimately become. Hoping that if she could remember when they didn’t exist, they might not matter so much when they were gone.

She wondered who was running the casino tonight — Who’s left?-or whether anyone was. Even Herne had disappeared, by Moon Dawntreader’s strange magic. The hell with it. She had gone back just long enough to collect the few things she wanted to hold on to from her time as Persipone, and left them at her half-brother’s. She hadn’t seen her brother in a long time, and she hadn’t seen him tonight either — he’d already gone out on the town. But they’d never been exactly close, anyway.

“You’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got tonight, Polly.” She sighed. “Maybe you always were.” She sat down on an abandoned crate, in a pile of departure rubbish, comfortable in her old coveralls and her old surroundings. “You never bitched, no matter how hard I worked you, or how much crap I gave you… “Course, I guess you can’t complain, anyhow, so what does that prove?” She ate another cake. Pollux sat patiently on his tripod before her. She saw a red light begin to blink on his chest; the information short-circuited in her mind, and went unacknowledged. “Don’t your feelings ever get hurt, really, down inside someplace? Didn’t I ever insult you, or offend you, or something? Ye gods, I hope I never offended you, when you’ve been nothin’ but good to me…” She snuffled maudlinly.

“You could never offend me, Tor.”

She looked up at his inscrutable face, trying to interpret the meaning of the toneless words. “You mean that? I mean, do you mean that? You mean you — like me?”

“I mean ‘I like you,’ Tor. Yes, I do.” The faceless face looked at her.

“Well, what do you know?” She smiled. “I thought you weren’t supposed to. I thought you couldn’t. Feel anything, I mean. I always thought you were — uh, dumb. No offense,” hastily.

“I contain a sophisticated computer, Tor. I am programmed not to judge, except for legalities. But not to judge is hard at my level of complexity. I need constant readjustment.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “I guess I always knew you were more than jus’ a loadin’ device. I mean, where would a loadin’ device learn how to fix my hair? Or…” She faded, as she remembered. “Or squeal to the Blues about every wrong word somebody says on the Street.” She shrugged. “Or save my life; huh, Polly… ?” reaching out to pat him on the chest. “Oh, hell — we had some good times, didn’ we? You remember when old Stormprince assigned you to me? Gods, I was proud of myself! I thought being’ in charge of you was gonna be the high point of my life, you know? Who’d’ve figured… But in a way, maybe it was. I didn’t have any regrets, then. I dunno.” She ran a hand freely through her own limp hair. “I think it’s gonna take me a long time to figure out what being’ Perispone was.” She looked at her hands, which had not had a trace of callus for a long time now. “What’s that light flashing on you for? Did I forget to do something’ for you?” She stood up unsteadily.