Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“No!” The old woman slapped at her; she ducked her head. “Sibyls are diseased, the off worlders say they’re diseased. They’re all deceivers. No more pets, Blodwed! You stink the place up with them already. I’m getting rid of those—”

“You just try!” Blodwed kicked her viciously. The old woman howled and stumbled back. “You just try! You want to live forever, you old drooler, you better leave my pets alone!”

“All right, all right…” the crone whined. “Don’t talk to your mother like that, you ungrateful brat. Don’t I let you have anything you want?”

“That’s more like it.” Blodwed put her hands on her hips, looked down at Moon’s huddled grief again, grinning. “I think you’re going to be just what I need.”

“Gods! Oh, my gods,” more a curse than a prayer.

Jerusha stood silently beside Miroe on the lifeless beach, listened to the far, high skreeling of the displaced scavenger birds. Her eyes swept the death-littered field of stones restlessly, not wanting to settle anywhere, register any detail of the scene, but unable to look back at Miroe ashen-faced beside her. Unable to speak a word or even touch him, ashamed to intrude further on a grief past comprehending. This was the Hunt, the mer sacrifice — this stinking abattoir on the barren shore. This was the thing she had resented in principle, without ever trying to approach its reality. But this man had hated the reality.

Miroe moved away from the patrol craft began a path through the mutilated corpses of the mers, inspecting each hide-stripped, bloody form with masochistic thoroughness. Jerusha followed him, keeping her distance; felt her jaws tightening until she wondered whether she would ever be able to open her mouth again. She saw him stop and kneel down by one of the bodies. Moving closer, she saw that it was not a mer. And not human. “A— a dead Hound?”

“A dead friend.” He picked the dillyp’s limp body up like a sleeping child, she saw the dark stain that it left behind on the beach. She watched uncomprehendingly as he carried the body to the edge of the water, entered it without hesitation, wading further and further out until the frigid sea lapped his chest. And then he let the exile go quietly home.

As he came out of the water again Jerusha took off her coat and threw it around his shoulders. He nodded absently; she almost thought that the cold did not reach him. She remembered suddenly that one of the tech runners five years ago had been a dillyp.

“She must be dead, too.” His voice was like steel. She realized that there was no sign of Moon Dawntreader. “Starbuck, the Hounds, did this.” He gestured; the word was a curse. “The last Hunt. On my land.” His hands coiled into fists. “And leaving them like this, mutilating them, this — flaunting. Why?”

“Arienrhod ordered it.” The simple statement seared her like a beam of light, as she saw the only conceivable reason that Arienrhod might have for lashing out at an off worlder a total stranger. Because of me? No, no… not because of me!

Miroe turned as though her guilt shone out like a beacon. “This is a crime against a citizen of the Hegemony, on his granted land.” His voice accused her without needing to say the words. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes, you have the jurisdiction. Do you have the control to charge Starbuck with murder — Commander?”

She stiffened. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more, Miroe…” touching the badges on her coat collar. She took a deep breath. “But I swear to you, before your gods and mine, that I will do anything in my power to make it happen.” (seeing the ruined bodies) “She destroys everything she touches, goddamn her—” (BZ’s life gone up in a ball of flame) “—and I’ll make her pay, if I have to die to do it! She won’t get away with it—” (LiouxSked’s life ruined) “—she thinks she’s untouchable, she thinks she’ll be Queen forever; but she won’t get away with it—” (her own life ruined) “—if I have to drown her myself!”

“I believe you, Jerusha,” Miroe said, unsmiling; she heard the cold accusation fade from his voice. “But there isn’t much time.”

“I know.” She looked away, deliberately imprinting her mind with the gaping ruin of a creature whose only crime was life. “I’ve never seen a mer—” She pressed her lips together.

“You haven’t seen one here, either.” His voice was unsteady.

“Not those mounds of dead flesh — those are nothing at all. You haven’t seen the mers until you’ve seen them dance on the water, or heard their song… You haven’t understood the real crime until you know the truth about what they are. They’re not just animals, Jerusha.”

“What?” She turned back. “What are you saying?” No, don’t tell me this; I don’t want to know.

“They’re intelligent beings. There weren’t two murders on this beach today, there were half a hundred. And over the last millennium—”

She swayed, shaken by the wind. “No… Miroe, they’re not. They can’t be!”

“They’re a synthetic life form; the Old Empire gave them intelligence as well as immortality. Moon Dawntreader told me the truth about them.”

“But why? Why would they be intelligent? And how could the Hedge not know… ?” Her voice faded.

“I don’t know why. But I know the Hegemony has to have known the truth, for a millennium. I told Moon when I heard it that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Muscles twitched in his face. “I do now.” He turned his back on her.

Jerusha stood without words, without motion, waiting for the brittle bowl of the sky to crack open and fall, waiting for the weight of injustice to crush this eggshell world of lies and bring it crashing down on her… But there was no change in the sea, in the air, no difference in the profile of the cliffs or the suffocating awareness of death, waste, mourning. “Miroe… come back to the patroller. You’ll — you’ll catch your death.”

He nodded. “Yes. The survivors will return, in time. I have to leave them to — to their own. I can’t help them, I can’t help my own, any more.” He looked toward the small outrigger beached at the water’s edge, its sail flapping mournfully. “She gave me the most important gift anyone could have given me, Jerusha: the truth… She said she was told to come back here; shed had a sibyl’s sending. I don’t understand, I can’t believe it was meant to end like this for her. What does it all mean?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.” Jerusha shook her head. “Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don’t we? We have to go on looking for justice… and settling for revenge.” She started back toward the patrol craft her arms wrapped around her. As they passed the abandoned outrigger it occurred to her that Arienrhod’s Hounds had destroyed Arienrhod’s clone child… and Arienrhod would never know it.

“I was worried about you when they reported the storm.”

“It was nothing. We just rode it out,” listlessly.

Soft laughter. “How many of my Starbucks could say that without lying?”

Sparks did not answer, lying motionless on the bed, watching himself in the mirrors, watching her watch him watch, into infinity. Arienrhod lay beside him; the curving lines of her body were the folds of a continent rising from the sea, cloaked in the snow fields of her hair. Strands of thread-fine silver chain spilled down from her waist like a river of light. She massaged the fragrant oil into his skin with slow, exploratory fingers; but his body did not respond. Would not respond, to her most intimate touch, her most knowing suggestions. Like a corpse… gods, help me, I’m buried alive.