Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“Then give us something worth doing for once!” KerlaTinde swept his hand across the nonexistent view from her window. “Not picking up drunks out of the gutter. Let us go after the big-time criminals, get some convictions that would mean something.”

“You’ll never get those convictions. It’s a waste of time.” Gods, am I really saying that? Am I really the one, the same one, who stood there where he’s standing and said what he’s saying to me? She wadded an empty iesta packet into a painful ball below the desk edge. No… I’m not the same one. But it was true, what she had just said to him…

As soon as she became Commander, she had tried to crack down on the big operators she knew were controlling networks of interplanetary vice from right here in Carbuncle. But they had slipped through her fingers like water. Any illegal activity that they might conceivably be caught in here on Tiamat turned out to be technically under the control of a citizen of this world. And the Winters were under the Queen’s law; she couldn’t touch them without the Queen’s permission.

“Commander LiouxSked didn’t think that way.”

The hell he didn’t. But there was no point in saying it. Had LiouxSked faced the same infuriating impasse — or had Arienrhod restructured Carbuncle society just for her? She couldn’t explain it to KerlaTinde, or any of the rest, anyway; they already knew she was in the Queen’s pocket, and nothing she could say would ever make any difference. “You’re patrolling the Street for a good reason, KerlaTinde; you know crimes of violence have soared” — she saw Arienrhod’s hand behind that, too; saw herself taking the blame for it in KerlaTinde’s eyes—”as we near the final departure. And we won’t be getting any more replacements. So you’ll go on patrolling the Street until I tell you to stop; until the last ship is ready to lift off this planet.”

“Chief Inspector Mantagnes isn’t—”

“Mantagnes isn’t Commander, damn it! I am!” her voice slipped away from her. “And my orders stand. Now get out of my office, Captain, before I make it Lieutenant.”

KerlaTinde retreated, his olive skin darkening with indignation. The door shut her off from one more unresolved confrontation, one more stupid mistake.

No wonder they hate me. Hating herself, she stared at the opacity of the polarized windows, her only shield against the radiation of hostility from the station beyond. The windows reflected her own image faintly, like a hologrammic transmission ghost, a flawed recreation of a false reality. There was no Jerusha, no woman, no solid human flesh, any more: only a nerve-racked, knife-tongued harridan with paranoid delusions. Who the hell was she kidding? It was her own fault, she couldn’t handle the job, she was a failure… an inferior being, weak, overemotional, female. She leaned back in her chair, looking down along her body, knowing the truth that even the heavy uniform could never fully conceal. And she didn’t even have the guts to admit that it was her own fault, not some wild plot of the Queen’s. No wonder she was a laughingstock.

And yet — she had seen the Queen’s face on a Summer girl. She had seen the Queen’s fury at the girl’s loss. And she had seen LiouxSked crawling in his own filth — for no conceivable reason, if not for Arienrhod’s revenge. She wasn’t losing her mind! The Queen was systematically taking it away from her.

But there was nothing she could do about it; nothing. She had tried everything, but there was no escape — only the awareness that her career, her future, her faith in her own ability were inexorably bleeding away. Her career was being ruined, the record of her command would be one long list of failures and complaints. The end of their stay on Tiamat would mark the end of everything she had worked toward or ever wanted. Arienrhod was destroying her, too, not swiftly, not like LiouxSked — but in a way that would let her perceive every agonizing nuance of her own destruction.

And best of all, Arienrhod must have realized that she would stay on, keep defying her own destiny — as she had always done, all her life. Because to quit now and leave Tiamat, give up her position, would be to admit that it had all been futile. It would all be futile yet, when they finished with this world; but in the meantime even this hellish charade of her dream was better than a life with no dream at all.

She couldn’t strike back at the Queen, hadn’t been able to cause her even the smallest inconvenience in return. Accidentally she had foiled one plot by Arienrhod to keep Winter in power. But it hadn’t given her even a moment’s satisfaction, the gods knew — and since then she had turned up no clue about what new webs the Queen might be weaving. There was no doubt in her mind that there would be another plan… but more than enough doubt that this time the Hegemony, in the person of herself, would be able to stop it. And that failure would be the crowning act in her own rum.

But there was still time. The contest wasn’t over yet, she had to turn herself around… “Are you listening, bitch? I’ll get you yet; by the Bastard Boatman, I swear it! I won’t break, you can’t destroy me before I—”

The door opened again, batting the words back at her; a patrolman entered, realizing with one swift look around that she was alone. He set another stack of cassettes on her desk with a sidelong glance.

“Well, what are you staring at?”

He saluted and left.

With another choice one for the wardroom gossips. Her resolution crumbled. How do you really know; how can you tell if you’ve really lost your mind… ? She reached past the terminal toward the new pile of records, but her hand closed over a solitary printed sheet lying half-pinned beneath them. She pulled it free, read one line: LIST OF GRIEVANCES. She crushed the paper between her hands. Who put it there? Who?

The intercom began to chime; she hit the go-ahead mutely, not trusting her voice.

“Radiophone call from the outback, Commander. Somebody named Kennet or something. Should I put it through?”

Ngenet? Gods, she couldn’t talk to him now, not like this. Why the hell does he pick the worst times, why does he even bother any more?

“And Inspector Mantagnes is here to see you.”

“Put the call on my line.” But what will I say? What? “And tell Mantagnes to—” She clenched her teeth. “Tell him to wait.”

She heard storm static crackle from the speaker, and the familiar distortion of a familiar voice. “Hello? Hello, Jerusha—”

“Yes, Miroe!” Remembering with a sudden rush of pleasure what it was like to hear a human being speak to her willingly, gladly… realizing suddenly how much more than simple humanity his friendship gave her. “Gods, it’s good to hear from you again.” She was smiling, actually smiling.

“Can’t hear you… reception’s lousy! How’d you… come out to the plantation again… day or so?… of a long time since we’ve had a visit!”

“I can’t, Miroe.” How long had it been? Months, since she had accepted an invitation, even spoken to him — months since she had spent a day or an hour selfishly on something that made her smile. She couldn’t, she couldn’t afford to.

“What?”

“I said, I— I…” She saw herself reflected in the wall, the face of a jailer, the face of a prisoner in a cell. Panic touched her with a dun ringer. “Yes! Yes, I’ll come. I’ll come tonight.”

“All right, suckers. You’re on your own again.” Tor moved back, hoping for sinuous grace, hoping against hope. Inadvertently revealing more flesh than she had intended to, she bowed her way out of the eerily glowing obstacle course. Hologrammic coin ships and a meteor swarm tangled intangibly in the golden crocheted cap that held her midnight wig under control. The drapery of her silken overalls flashed the blue flame-color of a welding torch; the expanses of skin they left uncovered were a deathly lavender against the darkness.