Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

He glanced down at the readout on the panel again, to make his own assessment, as TierPardee sang out, “Yes, sir! We’ve finally nailed ‘em, Inspector, they’ve got snow skimmers down there.” TierPardee laughed gleefully. “I’ll take us in low and scare the piss out of them; ought to be no trouble picking the Mother lovers off after that, right, sir?”

Gundhalinu opened his mouth to make a skeptical response just as his eyes found the next readout, just as it suddenly glared red-red warning—”Get us the hell out of here now!”

He reached across TierPardee’s amazed and sluggish body, jerked the control bar back and around into a steeply climbing turn. He felt the bar tremble and fight his control. “Come on…”

“Inspector, what the—” TierPardee never finished it, as the hidden bolt of directed energy caught them from below and punched them out of the sky.

Gundhalinu had a brief, whorled image of black-white-blue photo printed indelibly on his brain; giddy free fall spun him like a lottery wheel before the craft’s stabilizers reintegrated and stopped their nightmare tumbling. But not their fall — they were dead in the air, dropping down like a stone through a soundless dive that would end with them dead on the ground. His hand stretched instinctively to press the restart button; he pushed it again and again, his numbed brain acknowledging at last the reason why there was no response: the beamer had slagged the shielding on the power unit, and there was nothing he could do. Nothing — TierPardee sat gaping like a plastic dummy, making a sound that at first he mistook for laughter. The sky disappeared, he saw the rumpled cloud-surface of the snow and the jutting black fangs of the naked cliff leap up to meet them…

They hit the snow before they hit the cliff, and that was all that saved them. The snow plowed up in a cushion of blinding white, absorbing the impact that still threw him forward so hard his helmet warped the pliant windshield.

For a long time he lay without moving, doubled over in the embrace of the harness; listening to bells, unable to focus his eyes or even make a sound. Knowing that there was something important he must say, must warn — but it wouldn’t take form in his mouth or even his mind. The cabin felt hot to him, which struck him as strange because they were buried in snow. Buried. Buried. Dead and . ? He shut his eyes. Something stank. His eyes hurt… The air. The air was going bad, smelled like buried — like burning.

His eyes watered; he opened them again. Burning insulation. That was it. The avalanche of snow was slushing, slipping down outside the windows. ““Pardee. Overload. Gedoud.” The words ware unintelligible even to him. He shook TierPardee, but the patrolman’s eyes stayed shut, and he hung forward across the straps unmoving. Gundhalinu struggled with his own harness latch, finally set himself free. He tried the door; it was still blocked shut by snow. He beat against it with his fist, uselessly, while every blow fed back through his bones into his throbbing head. At last he wedged himself sideways and shoved with his feet, threw all his returning strength and his fear into it. The door began to give, a centimeter at a time, until at last it sprang upward on its own, half dumping him out into the snow.

He landed on his knees in a puddle of slush, shocked by the sudden assault on his aching body of painful heat and cold. He pulled himself up the side of the craft, forcing his rubber legs to lock and support him, separating the sinister heat of the power unit going critical from the icy embrace of the wind. He had to get TierPardee out and as far away as he could before the patroller turned into a star.

He leaned into the cabin; but something caught his collar, jerked him away and back into the snow again. Not bells, this time, but the ugly music of human laughter echoing off the cliff face; ugly, because he knew it was directed at him. He rolled over, pushed up onto his knees to face his tormenters — saw with no surprise at all the white parkas and leggings, half a dozen pale, amorphous faces half obscured by slitted wooden goggles, like the bulging eyes of a family of insectoids. But these were human, all right — nomadic Winter pfalla herders turned thieves by opportunity, who had shed their bright, traditional clothing for the antiseptic camouflage of arctic commandos. A blow on the back ended his assessment as he sprawled forward into the snow; he felt someone roll him onto his side and deftly disarm him. There was a whoop of triumph as the bearded male held his stunner up like a prize.

Gundhalinu sat up, wiping snow from his face, forgetting the indignity of his position in the urgency of his need. “That’s going to blow—!” He pointed, not sure how much they would understand. “Help me get him out of there; there’s not much time!” He climbed to his feet, relieved at the murmur of consternation that ran through the group. He started back toward the patrol craft but another of the nomads had gotten there first, and straightened holding TierPardee’s gun, grinning satisfaction. “He’s good for nothing, that one — this’s all I found. It’s too hot in there; forget about it.” The roving muzzle of the stunner suddenly targeted Gundhalinu’s chest. “Zap, you’re paralyzed, Blue!” A high-pitched adolescent giggle escaped from the muffled figure.

Gundhalinu stopped, looking past the teenager and the filamented muzzle of the gun. “He’s not dead, he’s hurt! He’s alive; we’ve got to get him out of there—” His breath rose up white in his face.

But the man who had taken his own gun and another man caught him by the arms at a sharp command. They began to drag him back away from the craft. The teenager strutted behind him, on snowshoes like the rest, giggling again as his boots broke through the snow crust and he floundered.

“No! You can’t do this; he’s alive, damn you, he’ll be burned alive in there!”

“Then be glad you’re only watching, and not joining him.” The first man grinned at his side. They forced him to go with them as far as the outcropping of fallen rock where they had hidden their snow skimmers. They all stopped then, and turned back, crouching down to watch. The two men still held his arms locked between them, forcing him to keep his feet as they made him turn with the rest. He could see the distant patrol craft melted clear of snow now, and a dull glow spreading over its crumpled frame. He looked up into the sky, filling his eyes with the blue of heaven, and prayed to the gods of eight separate worlds that TierPardee would never know what was happening to him now.

But the sky was empty, and in the empty white silence of the frozen Winter world a sun ball of searing light burned his sight away and the blast that followed obliterated all his other senses.

Consciousness followed pain back into his aching body; he lay propped against a boulder while the nomads shuffled and muttered and pointed past him in subdued awe. One of them laughed nervously. Memory came back to him and he remembered why they were laughing… he leaned over and vomited into the trampled snow.

“They send you to kill us, and you can’t even stomach the sight of death!” One of the nomads stood over him and spat. The spittle landed on the heavy cloth of his uniform coat; he watched it begin to freeze. He looked up, aware of how the cold air burned as his lungs sucked it in, aware of the fact that he had just been spat upon by a barbarian, by an old hag with a face like fishnet, who wasn’t fit to touch the lowest Unclassified on Kharemough.

He pulled himself up the rock, clumsy with stiffness and cold, until he could stand looking down at her. He said, his voice brittle with fury, “You are all under arrest, for murder and robbery. You will return with me to the star port to face charges.” Hearing the words, he could not quite believe that he had really said them.