Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“I’m not Arienrhod!” She stopped, realizing that he didn’t mean it that way, but too late “I thought you—”

“I didn’t.”

“I know.” But knowing that a part of him would always see Arienrhod when he looked at her — because Arienrhod would always be there for him to see; always there, making them afraid to meet each other’s eyes. She wiped the twilight dampness from her face. Beyond the city’s looming edge she could see the band of sunset in the west, a dying rainbow. “When will we ever see another rainbow now? Will we have to live all our lives without one?”

Something broke the water surface below them, a soft intrusion on the words. Looking down, Moon saw a sleek, brindled head rising sinuously to meet her gaze. She felt her own breath catch, heard Sparks’s involuntary protest, “ No .”

“Sparks!” She caught his arm as he would have pulled away from the railing. “Wait. Don’t.” She held him.

“Moon, what are you trying to do to me?”

But she didn’t answer, crouching down, drawing him with her, the beadwork of her gossamer green shawl rattling on the wooden pier. She put out her arm, reached until the mer’s dark silhouette met her outstretched hand, becoming real under her touch. “What are you doing here?” The lone mer looked at her with ebony, expressionless eyes, as though it didn’t have the answer even in its own mind. But it made no move to leave them, its flippers stirring the flotsam-littered water at the dock’s edge rhythmically in place. It began to croon forlornly, a single voice from a lost chorus of patterned song. The songs… why do you sing? Are they more than songs? Could they tell you your purpose, your duty, your reason for existence, if you only understood? Excitement tingled in her. Ngenet. Ngenet could help her learn. And if she was right, learn to teach them. She had seen him in the crowds today, seen the pride and hope on his face, but hadn’t been able to reach him. And she had also seen the unforgiving memory as his eyes found Sparks beside her. She kept Sparks’s hand locked in her own, holding on against his trembling resistance; forced it out over the water. He groaned, as though she were holding his hand over a fire. The mer looked cryptically from her face to his, and sank slowly back into the dark water without touching him.

Moon let his hand go, watched it stay outstretched above the water of its own accord. Slowly Sparks drew his hand back to himself; crouched, staring at it, bracing against the rail.

Behind them Moon heard the incredulous mutterings of her Summer retinue — the omnipresent Goodventures, who had seemed to follow while trying to lead her all through the day. She had antagonized them by her willful disobedience of their ritual expectations, and she knew that because of their royal background they could be dangerous enemies to the future. She resented them even more now, when she needed this moment alone with Sparks in the intimacy of his grief. She understood at last that becoming Queen did not mean absolute freedom, but the end of it.

“The Sea never forgets. But She forgives, Sparkie.” Moon reached to touch his hair, cupped his chill, tear-wet face between her chill, wet hands, feeling his shame like one more icy splinter of doubt. “It just takes time.”

“A lifetime will never be enough!” A dagger, driven by his own hand. He would never belong, here, anywhere, until he found peace within himself.

“Oh, Sparks — let the Sea witness that you hold my willing heart, you alone, now and forever.” She spoke the pledge words defiantly; the only words that filled her need to fill the need in him.

“Let the Sea witness…” He repeated the words, softening as he spoke, his strength, his resistance, melting away.

“Sparks… the day’s finished out there, even if it never ends in Carbuncle. Let’s find our place for tonight, where you can forget I’m a queen, and I can forget it…” She glanced over her shoulder at the Goodventures. But what about tomorrow? “Tomorrow everything will start to fit into place. Tomorrow we’ll be free of today; and then on the day after…” She brushed her hair back from her eyes, looking out across the darkening waters again, where no trace lay at all of the sacrifice they had given to the Sea this dawn. The Sea rested, sublime in Her indifference, an imperturbable mirror for the face of universal truth. Today never ends in Carbuncle… will tomorrow really ever come? She saw the future that lay dying beneath the dark waters: the future that would never come, if she failed, if she stumbled, if she weakened for a moment -

She whispered fiercely, close by his ear, “Sparkie, I’m afraid.” He held her tightly and did not answer.

Jerusha stood in the fiery hell-glow of the red-lit docking bay, beneath the vast umbrella of the suspended coin ship. The final ship, taking on the last of her police officers — the last off worlders to depart from Tiamat. In the frantic finality of the past few days the ships of the Assembly had already lifted into planetary orbit, into the company of the other coin ships already there to take on shuttle loads of die-hard merchants and exhausted Festival refugees.

She endured the inventories patiently, checked and rechecked the data from reports and records, trying to be certain that no one was left, nothing vital left undone, unsalvaged, unsealed. It was her responsibility to make certain that the job was thorough and complete. She had done the job to the best of her ability, making certain that her men left no power pack in place, no system unstripped, no outlet accessible. And all the while she had known, with a strange double vision, that tomorrow she would be trying to undo again everything that she had just undone today.

But by the gods, I won’t make it easy on myself! Knowing that if she finished the career that had meant so much to her once with an act of betrayal, she would never be able to build a new life on its foundation that would have any meaning. Nothing worth having is easy to get. She looked away from the loading of miscellaneous supplies, away from the cluster of blue uniforms and containers by the coin ship’s suspended loading foot. The ship, the docking bay, beyond it the spaceport’s throbbing complexity that was almost like a living organism — all that they symbolized, she was giving up. Not in a year, or a week, or even a day — in less than an hour, all that would be behind her, would be leaving her behind. She was giving it all up… for Carbuncle. And before the last starship left Tiamat space, it would send down the high-frequency signal that would demolish the fragile microprocessors that made virtually every piece of technology left on the planet function. The tech hoarders would hoard in vain, and Tiamat would be returned to technical ground zero. She remembered with sudden incongruity the sight of a windmill on a lonely hilltop on Ngenet Miroe’s plantation. Not quite ground zero. Remembering that she had had no idea of what use he could possibly have for a thing like that. There are none so blind as those who will not see. She smiled, as suddenly.

“Commander?”

She pulled her eyes back to the space around her, expecting one more request or verification. “Yes, I’m — Gundhalinu!” He saluted. His grin highlighted the spectral gauntness of his face; his uniform hung on him like something borrowed from a stranger.

“What the hell are you doing out here? You shouldn’t be—”

“I came to say good-bye, Commander.”

She broke off, set down the computer remote on the makeshift desk of empty shipping containers. “Oh.”

“KerlaTinde told me — that you were resigning, that you’re going to stay on Tiamat?” He sounded bewildered, as though he expected her to deny it.