Joan Vinge: The Snow Queen

In return Tiamat offered off world voyagers a stopover and a haven, a resting place or meeting place to ameliorate the long passages between other Hegemony worlds. It was unique as a kind of crossroads, because it alone orbited its Gate: Even though its orbit was long, it was still closer and more accessible by light-years than any other world.

Arienrhod turned her back on the stars and moved silently across the sensuous synthetic pile of the pastel carpet to the mirror again. She confronted her own reflection with the same porcelain lack of expression that she used on the off world trade representatives or delegations of the nobility, assessing the elaborate piling of the milk white hair behind the snow-starred diadem, the flawless translucency of her skin. She ran a hand along her cheek, down her jewel stranded throat and over the glittering silk of her shirt in what was almost a caress; feeling the firm youthfulness of her body, as perfect now as it had been almost one hundred and fifty years ago, on the day of her investiture. Or was it—? She frowned faintly, leaning closer to her own face. Yes… Satisfaction, in the eyes that were the colors of mist and moss agate.

There was another reason why the off worlders came to Tiamat bearing gifts: She held the key to growing old without aging. The seas of this world were a fountain of youth, from which the richest and most powerful paid to drink, and she personally controlled the source — the slaughter of mers. Hers were the calculated judgments that determined which off world merchant or official would serve Winter’s interests best in return for this unique commodity… hers were the not-quite-casual whims that gave her favored nobility rights of exploitation in the ranges of the sea, or the right to a precious vial of silvery fluid. It was said that the closeness of a given noble to the Queen’s favor could be estimated by the noble’s apparent youth.

But nothing lasts forever. Not even eternal youth. Arienrhod frowned again; the gilded atomizer twitched as her hand tightened. She lifted it, opened her mouth, and inhaled the heavy silver spray. It turned the back of her throat to ice, making her eyes water. She sighed with relief, a release from anticipation. The ideal state of preservation was maintained by a daily renewal of the “water of life,” as the off worlders euphemistically named it. She found the term amusing, if only for its hypocrisy: It was not water, but an extract from the blood of an indigenous sea creature, the mer; and it had as much to do with death — the death of the mer — as it did with the long life of a human being. Every user was as aware of that fact as she was, on one level or another. But what was the life of an animal, compared to the chance for eternal youth?

So far technology had failed to reproduce the extract, a benign virus that enhanced the body’s ability to renew itself without genetic error. The virus died after a short time outside the body of its original host, no matter how carefully it was maintained. Its half-life in any other mammaloid creature was just as limited, so a constant supply was needed, for a constant demand. And that meant prosperity for as long as Winter reigned.

But the Summer Star was already visible in the daytime sky; spring was official, the Change was coming, even the Summers would be aware of that by now. This world was moving into its high summer at last, the time when the unnatural stresses created by their approach to the black hole caused a flare-up of the Twins’ own energy, and Tiamat became insufferably hot. The Summers would be forced to move north from their ranges in the equatorial islands, and their influx would disrupt Winter’s status quo as they filled the interstices of its territory.

But that was only a part of the greater change that would overtake her people. Because the Twins’ approach to the black hole would also make Tiamat a lost world to the Hegemony… She looked back out the window, at the stars. As the Twins neared the Black Gate, as its other tormented captive, the Summer Star, brightened in Tiamat’s heaven, the stability of the Gate itself deteriorated. The passage from Tiamat to the rest of the Hegemony and back was no longer simple or certain. Tiamat ceased to be a meeting place and stopover for Hegemony travelers, the outflow of the water of life and the inflow of technology ceased together. And Tiamat was an embargoed world; the Hegemony allowed no indigenous technological base to be developed, and without the crucial knowledge of how their imported goods were made, the machinery of Winter’s society would quickly, irrevocably decay. Even without the Summers moving north at the Change to hurry it along, the world as she knew it would cease to exist. She detested even the thought of life in such a world. But then, that would scarcely concern her, would it? They say death is the ultimate sensory experience.

Her laughter sounded in the quiet room. Yes, she could laugh at death now, even though she had been withholding payment from it for one hundred and fifty years. Soon it would claim its debt; and the Summers would take payment from her at the next, the final Festival, because that was the way of things. But she would have the last laugh on the Summers. At the last Festival, nearly a generation ago, she had sown among the unsuspecting Summers the nine seeds of her own resurrection: nine clones of herself, to be raised among them and accepted by them as their own; who would learn their ways and, being the children of her mind, know how to manipulate them when the time came.

She had kept track of the children as they grew, always believing there would be at least one among them who would be all that she herself was… and there had been one. Only one. The off worlder doctor’s pessimism almost twenty years ago had not been purely spite; three clones had been lost in spontaneous abortions, others were born with physical deformities or grew up retarded and emotionally disturbed. Only one child was reported to be perfect in every way… and she would make that child the Summer Queen.

She reached down, picked up the small, ornate picture cube from the tabletop beside her. The face within it might have been a picture of herself as a girl. She rotated the cube, watched the laughing face change expressions through three dimensions as it moved. The island trader who kept track of the child’s progress had taken the hologram for her, and she found herself moved by strange and unexpected emotions when she looked into it. Sometimes she found herself longing to see more of the child than just this picture… to touch her or hold her, to watch her at play, watch her grow and change and learn: to see herself as she must have been, so long ago that she could not really remember it any more.

But no. Look at the child, dressed in coarse, scratchy cloth and greasy fish skins, probably eating out of a pot with her hands in some drafty stone hovel. How could she bear to see herself like that — to see in microcosm what this world would be reduced to in a few more years, when the off worlders abandoned it again? But it might not have to happen again, at least not so completely, if only her plan could be carried through. She looked more closely at the face in the picture, so like her own. But when she looked this closely, there was something that was not the same, something — missing.

Experience, that was all that was missing. Sophistication. Soon she would find a way to bring the girl here, explain things to her, show her what she had to look forward to. And because she would be explaining those things to herself, the girl would understand. What little technology the off worlders left to them must not be allowed to die again. This time they must preserve and nurture it; at least try to meet the off worlders as something more than barbarians when they returned again…