Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

They were dropping down again now, into the grounds of a large estate; skimming above paintings laid out on the land in beds of glorious blooms, shrubs trained to mimic strange creatures, fragile summerhouses wrapped in mazes of hedge. The pilot set them down on the flagstoned landing terrace before the main house, a structure the size of a meeting hall, but all curves and hummocks and gentle slopes covered with vines, imitating the land itself. There were many windows, many of them filled with colored glass, repeating the forms and hues of the art gardens. Gaping at the house, Moon saw the great frescoed doors begin to open.

“You want me to wait, citizens?” The pilot hung an arm across the edge of his seat back, looking skeptical.

“That won’t necessary be.” Elsevier passed him her credit card coolly; Moon climbed out with the others.

“Looks like just the spot for a day in the country.” Cress stretched his arms.

“Many.” Silky turned slowly where he stood, looking back and down over the tiers of gardens.

Elsevier led them to the entrance. A dignified middle-aged woman with pale freckles and a silver ring piercing one nostril stood waiting for them; she wore a simple white robe wrapped by a wide sash, covered by strand on strand of heavy turquoise jewelry. “Aunt Elsevier, what an unexpected surprise.” Moon was not certain if the gracious smile that included them all went any deeper than her skin.

“Hardly unexpected,” Elsevier murmured. “One of the inventions that made my father-in-law’s fortune was a system that screens callers electronically… Hello, ALV, dear,” in Sandhi. “How nice that our visits coincide. I’ve a friend your father to see brought.”

She touched Moon’s arm. “I hope he well is.” Moon noticed that she did not use the familiar thy.

“Fine, thank you; but at the moment the physicist Darjeengeshkrad is him consulting.” She ushered them into the cool interior, closing the doors. Light from the stained glass panels on either side fragmented Moon’s vision, softened her sudden awareness of their group incongruity. “Let me you comfortable make until he’s through.” She gestured them on down the hall; Moon noticed that her fingernails were long, and had been filed into sculptures.

She took them through a series of rising rooms into one where the wide, color-banded window overhung the painted gardens. ALV pressed one of a series of controls in the wall inset by the door; a large painting of several Kharemoughis picnicking under the trees became a threedy screen full of arguing men. She nodded toward the mounds of red and purple tapestry cushions, the oases of low wooden tables inlaid with gold and amethyst. “Here you are. The servos will in and out be… in case you anything need. And now I hope you’ll me excuse; I’m going over the tax data for Father, and it’s a dreadful project. He’ll you join, just as soon as he can.” She left them alone with the declaiming debaters on the wall.

“My, my.” Cress folded his arms, wheezed indignantly. “

“Make yourselves at home; steal some silverware.” Family ties meant something on Big Blue. All my parents—”

“Now, Cress.” Elsevier shook her head at him. “I’ve only met the girl — the woman — twice, once when she was eight, and once at TJ’s funeral. She can’t have heard much good about any of us in between. And you know how the highborns are about—” she glanced down at herself, “mixed marriages.”

Cress shook his head back at her, nudged a table leg with his sandal. “This’s fine workmanship, Elsie,” loudly. “We could four digits for a couple of those stones upstairs get.”

She hissed disapprovingly. “Control yourself. Moon?”

Moon started, turned back from the window.

“Didn’t I tell you it was beautiful here?”

Moon nodded, smiling, without the words to say how beautiful.

“Do you think you could stay, and be a sibyl here?”

Moon’s smile faded by halves. She shook her head, moved slowly back into the room and settled onto a pile of cushions. Elsevier’s eyes followed her, but she couldn’t answer them. I can’t answer any question! She pointed at the screen, changing the subject, as Elsevier sat down beside her. “Why are they angry?”

Elsevier peered at the gesticulating speakers, concentrating. “Why, that’s old PN Singalu, the Unclassified’s political leader. Bless me, I didn’t know he was still alive. It’s a parliamentary debate; there’s an interpreter, so that temperamental young dandy on the right must be a highborn. They can’t speak directly to each other, you know.”

“I thought the Unclassifieds didn’t have any rights.” Moon watched the two men face each other burning-eyed from their podiums, across the neutral ground of the droning, shaven-headed interpreter. They ran over the tail of his words to answer each other, while he repeated what they had already heard, like children arguing. Looking at them she couldn’t tell one from the other, wondered how they knew for themselves which one was the inferior.

“Oh, they have some rights, including the right to representation; it’s simply that everything not specifically given to them is specifically forbidden. And they aren’t allowed enough representatives to change the laws. But they keep trying.”

“How can they run a government at all; I thought the Prime Minister was out in space?”

“Oh, he’s on another level entirely.” Elsevier waved a hand. “He and the Assembly represent Kharemough, but they represent the days when Kharemough was first making contact with the other worlds that became the Hegemony.” Kharemough had thought that it was rebuilding the Old Empire in microcosm, with the help of the Black Gate. But in fact they came nowhere near the Old Empire’s technological sophistication, and they had learned in time that real control over several subject worlds wasn’t practical without a faster than-light star drive Their dreams of domination were swallowed up in the vastness of space; until they could regain a star drive they would have to be content with economic dominance, a kind the rest of the Hegemony was willing to support. But the Prime Minister and his floating royalty continued as they had begun, a symbol of unity, although not the unity of empire. They traveled from world to world, accepting homage as virtual gods — seemingly ageless, protected by time dilation and the water of life from the precession of the universe outside.

“And they’re always welcome, of course; because, ironically, they’re nothing but a harmless fantasy.” The voices of the debaters, and the tempers behind them, had been rising while Elsevier spoke; her sudden gasp echoed the stricken silence that suddenly fell, half a continent away, in the hall of government.

Moon saw the look of wonder that spread over the worn-leather face of the old man… and the utter disbelief on the face of the arrogant young Tech. Even the interpreter lost his glaze, sat openmouthed between them, looking left to right. “What?” she said, and Cress echoed it.

“He didn’t wait; he didn’t wait for the interpreter!” Elsevier pressed her hands against her cheeks with a cry of delight. “Oh, look at that old man! He worked all his life for a moment like this, knowing it would never come… And now it has.” There was a rising sigh of noise from the hall; the young Tech turned and walked off camera like a man caught in a trance. Someone wearing gray robes and a mantle of authority took his place, calling for order.

“What happened?” Moon leaned forward, hugging her knees with absorbed tension.

“The Tech forgot himself,” Elsevier breathed. “He addressed Singalu directly — as an equal — instead of through an interpreter. And in front of millions of witnesses!”