Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“It’s too hot.” Moon felt the crisscross of braids she had woven out of the way on top of her head, remembering the voluminous robes and tight-fitting jump suits she had tried on and tossed away in the shops of the Center City Bazaar. She had tried to wear her own clothes, now that they were off the ship, but the air of the station was as warm as blood, and so she wore as little as Elsevier would allow.

“When I was a girl I went covered in veils from head to foot; it was part of a woman’s mystery.” Elsevier arranged the folds of her own loose, color-splashed caftan; her necklace of bells jingled sweetly. “And what I wouldn’t have given to throw them all off and run naked down the street, in the steaming heat of summer. But I never dared.”

Moon clung to the seat back, one step behind a silently miserable Silky, empathizing with his discomfort locked in a press of strangers. She looked out through the open sides of the tram as they passed avenue after avenue of the port’s interstellar community, where Elsevier shared an apartment with Silky and Cress — and now her — in the elegant claustrophobia of Kharemough’s off world ghetto. Already she was lost; she could no more comprehend this city’s pattern than she could the customs of the people who controlled it. All she knew was that it all fit into a hollow ring, with the star port centered in the gap. The Kharemoughis referred to the off world community as the “Thieves’ Market,” and its resident aliens accepted the name with amused perversity. Kharemough dominated the Hegemony because it made the most sophisticated technological items available, and Elsevier had remarked to her one day, not without pride, that “Thieves’ Market” was more truth than slur.

“How did you become a — come to Kharemough, then?” as Elsevier did not go on with her thoughts. It had seemed more and more unlikely to her that this gentle, self-effacing woman would ever have chosen a career that defied anyone, let alone interstellar law.

“Oh, my dear, how I lost my veils and my respectability is a long, dull, involuted story.” But Moon saw the smile that crept out at the corners of her mouth.

“False modesty.” Cress slouched in the seat ahead of them, eyes closed, hands pressing his chest. He had been back from the port hospital for only two daylight periods.

“Cress, are you all right?” Elsevier touched his shoulder.

“Fine, mistress.” He grinned. “All ears.”

She nudged him, leaning back with a shrug of resignation. “Well. I come from Ondinee, Moon, which is a world that would seem even more incomprehensible to you than Kharemough, I’m sure; even though their tech level is not nearly as high. Women in my country were not encouraged—”

“Allowed,” Cress said.

“—to live full lives, the kind you’ve always known.” Her voice drifted above the murmur of conversation like smoke rising into the city haze of another world, in a land dominated by the pyramidal temple-tombs of an ancient theocracy. It was a land where women were bought and sold like bartered goods, and lived in separate quarters within the family compound, apart from the men, who were not their partners but their jealous lords. Their lives followed narrow paths worn deep over generations; lives that were incomplete but reassuringly predictable.

A timid girl called Elsevier — Obedience — had followed the worn paths of tradition, swathed in veils that hid her humanity from view, stumbling often in the ruts of ritual but never seeing her own life from enough of a distance to wonder why. Until one day in the temple square her curiosity had drawn her away from her offertory rounds at the shrines of her patron spirits, into the crowd gathered to hear a crazy off worlder shouting about freedom and equality. He climbed brazenly up the steps of the Great Temple of Ne’ehman, while a gang of radical local youths jammed leaflets into the hands and clothing of anyone who stood still. But the mob had turned angry and ugly, the ruthless Church Security had come to break it up, and in the panic that followed they had thrown everyone they laid hands on into the black vans together.

Elsevier had cowered, beaten down into a corner of the lurching van by the crush of bodies. Pawed and trampled, her veils torn, she had crouched there sobbing, hysterical with fear of defilement or death. But strong hands had seized her suddenly, dragging her to her feet, and held her up against the wall. Mindless with terror, she felt the world turn to water around her, and her body with it… “Don’t faint now, for gods’ sakes! I can’t hold you up forever—” and a slap.

Pain punctured the wall of her madness like a spike. She opened her eyes, whimpering, to see in front of her the haggard, bloodied face of the crazy off worlder the man who had caused this to happen the one man she would love for the rest of her life. But at that moment nothing was further from her mind than love.

“You okay?” He grunted as someone jabbed him in the kidneys. He held his arms rigid against the walls, shielding her with his body. She shook her head. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to.” He drew one hand in, touched her bare cheek softly. She shriveled away from his fingers, pulling the torn cloth of her veil back over her head. “Sorry.” He glanced down, bracing again as the van swayed through a turn. “You weren’t even there to hear my speech, were you?” He grimaced ruefully; suddenly he looked barely older than she was. She shook her head again, and wiped her eyes. He muttered something bitter in his own tongue. “KR’s right; I do more harm than good!… Don’t tremble, they won’t hurt you. Once we get to the inquisitory they’ll weed out the bad seed and let you go.”

Another shake. She knew the reputation of the Church police all too well. She felt her eyes fill with tears again.

“Don’t. Please don’t.” He tried a smile on, couldn’t keep it. “I won’t let them hurt you.” It was an absurdity, but she clung to it, to keep from drowning. “Listen,” he groped for a change of subject, “uh, since you’re — here, you want to hear my speech? This may be my last chance.” Beads of sweat glistened in his wiry brown hair.

She didn’t answer; and taking it for assent, he had filled the rest of their stifling journey to judgment with the sweet fresh air of his hopeless idealism — of all men living together like brothers, of women sharing the same freedoms with men, and taking the same responsibility for their own actions… By the time the van lurched to a stop, throwing them back into the reality of their plight, she had become certain that he was utterly insane… and utterly beautiful.

But then the doors banged open, letting in the harsh light of day and the harsh commands of the guards, who herded the miserable captives out into the walled yard of the detention center. They were the last ones down, and he had pressed her hand briefly—”Be brave, sister” — and asked her name.

She spoke to him at last, only to say her name, before the guards reached him. She heard him begin to protest her innocence as he was hauled out, heard it turn into a gasp. Groping heavy hands dragged her down and away so that she could not see what they did to him. She was herded into the station with the rest, and she didn’t see him again.

But waiting inside the station was her father, who had come at a frantic call from her chaperone after she had been carried off in the van. She ran sobbing to him, and after many threats and a large payment to the Church missionary fund he had taken her away from that place of horror, before the Church’s inquisitors could inflict any permanent damage to her reputation.

She had been at home for almost two weeks, barely daring to leave the house while her fright slowly healed, before she could bear to think about the mad off worlder again… to wonder about his words, and his kindness to her in the midst of chaos… harder still, to wonder whether he was even still alive. Knowing that she would never know, never see him again, still she could not push his shining-eyed ghost out of her mind.