Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

Gundhalinu felt disgust rise in his throat. “That’s what I’d expect of you — that you’d drag everything down to your own level, and smear it with filth. You’re incapable of anything better; of even understanding what it is you degrade and destroy.”

“How would you know?” Herne raised his head.

Gundhalinu frowned. “Because you can’t see why I want to help Moon more than I want to help myself. Because you can’t feel what it is about her—” He closed his eyes, looking back. “Yes, she made me love her. But she didn’t mean to. She took by giving… and that makes all the difference.”

Herne held up the control box, a challenge. “Why do you think I’m giving her this?”

“Revenge.”

Herne looked down again, without an answer.

“No clone ever made is a perfect image of the original. Even identical twins aren’t the same, and they’re not created by a middleman. The control in cloning isn’t nearly that precise, all you ever have is an imperfect recreation.”

“A flawed copy,” Herne said harshly.

“Yes.” Gundhalinu pressed his mouth together. “But why couldn’t it be better for the things that were changed — lost, or gained, inadvertently?”

Herne seemed to consider the possibility. “Maybe…” He scratched his jaw. “If you’re so sure Moon’s not the same, why don’t you tell her the truth?”

Gundhalinu shook his head. “I tried to.” He looked down at his wrists, traced the scarring with unresponsive fingers. “How can I tell her a thing like that?”

“Failed-suicide,” Herne whispered.

Gundhalinu stiffened, pushed up onto his knees. But then he saw that Herne was not trying to bait him.

“Did she drive you to that?” with bald curiosity, without rancor. Herne plucked at his braces like a harpist.

“No.” Gundhalinu shook his head, sinking back again. “She made me see that there might be some reason to go on living.” It struck him as strange that it did not seem stranger to be telling this to an Unclassified, sitting on the floor in a brothel. “All my life I never imagined it was possible to survive without the armor of one’s honor intact. And yet, here I am—” not quite a laugh, “—naked to the universe. And it hurts like hell… but maybe that’s only because now I feel everything more clearly.” And I don’t know yet whether I want it like this or not.

“You’ll get used to it,” Herne said sourly. “You know, I never used to be able to figure that at all — how you Techs swallowed poison any time life gave you a kick in the butt. You’d be dead a hundred times over if you’d been through my life — a thousand tunes!”

“You’re right.” Gundhalinu cringed at the idea of being trapped inside Herne’s mind. “Gods, that would be a fate worse than death.”

Herne looked at him with bleak disgust, with the unrelenting hatred of half his world’s people, until he felt his brittle arrogance crumble, and his gaze broke. “Yes. “Death before dishonor’ is a rich man’s privilege. Just like the water of life…” But nobody really owns Life, or Death.

“I used to think there was nothing more important to me than my life, there was nothing that could ever make me understand weaklings like you who’d throw it away. Survival was all that was important, it didn’t matter how you survived—”

“Was?” Gundhalinu rested his head against the wall, catching the past tense. His tongue absently explored the place where a tooth had been. He followed Herne’s glance down the exoskeleton that encased his lower body, realizing all that it implied the loss of — all that had made Herne a man in his own eyes, in the eyes of the world he belonged to. “You don’t have to stay here, you know. You could get that fixed on Kharemough.”

“After five years?” Herne’s voice rose, ready with all the arguments, all the answers he must have gone over and over endlessly in his own mind. “Nobody has that kind of money. I sure as hell don’t I don’t even have enough to get off this goddamn spitball!”

“Go to the authorities. They aren’t going to leave any off worlder behind who doesn’t want to stay.”

“Yeah, sure.” Herne pulled a bottle out from under his bed, un stoppered it and drank without offering to share it. “You have any idea, Blue, of how many outstanding charges I got against me back home? And a lot of other places. If you think I’m going to sweat blood in some penal colony for the rest of my life, you’re crazy.” He drank again, deeply.

“Then it doesn’t look like you’ve got much in the way of open options.” And you probably don’t deserve any. But he felt an unexpected prick of empathy. Sainted ancestors — what if I had been born in his body, and he in mine… “I’m — sorry.”

“Are you.” Herne wiped his mouth. “What about you, are you gonna go back, let them bust you off the force, throw you in prison for this? No. Hell, no, you’ll probably plead insanity: A crime of passion — you did it for love. Love — love is a disease!” His hand trembled around the bottle neck.

Death to love a sibyl… death not to. Gundhalinu let himself cough, postponing the need to answer. What am I going to do? I don’t know. The future opened like an infinite sea. “Ask me tomorrow…” He glanced toward the doorway as someone entered the room — Persipone, and a second figure cloaked and hooded.

Persipone moved aside to let the other step forward, drew the hood carefully back from her face.

“Moon?” Gundhalinu got to his knees, pulled himself up the wall, staring. Moon stood before him, her face subtly altered by cosmetic art — not painted with the tasteless gaud of Persipone’s, but heightened to a luminous, mother-of-pearl beauty that blinded his memory of the plain-pale, open face of an outback native girl. Her up swept hair was caught in a net of silver braids interwoven with golden beads, convolutions his eyes couldn’t follow. Tor pulled the cloak from her shoulders, revealing a honey-hued gown that flowed along her body like a field of wind-rippled grasses, that clung to her everywhere without seeming to, falling away from a bodice of ivory lace melting sensually against her skin. A collar of opalescent beadwork hid the secret sign at her throat.

BZ stood speechless, watched her radiance shine as she absorbed his admiration.

“BZ, I feel like a fool.” She shook her head; but she brightened still.

“My lady—” Like a star lord of the Empire he took her hand, bent above it, touched it briefly to his forehead. And every centimeter a queen. “To thee would I gladly kneel.” Moon smiled freely, not understanding — her own smile, and not Arienrhod’s.

“What do you think, Herne?” Persipone beamed, carrying Moon’s nomad tunic under her arm. “Will she pass?”

“Did you do that to her?” Herne asked.

She twitched a shoulder modestly. “Well… Pollux gave me a hand. He’s got good taste, for a machine.”

“Arienrhod doesn’t like that color.” Herne set the bottle on the floor. “But she’ll pass… Gods, yes — she’ll pass! Come here, I’ Your Majesty.” He held out his hands.

l.f

Gundhalinu frowned, kept his own hold on Moon’s hand, felt her grip tighten as she looked back at Herne. “Don’t call her that,” warning.

“She’d better get used to it. I won’t hurt you, damn it! I won’t even touch you.” Herne let his hands drop. “Just let me look at you awhile.”

Moon let go of Gundhalinu, went to stand before him. She turned slowly, uncertain of her skirts, but no longer uncertain under his gaze. He devoured her with his eyes, consumed her, but she stood with patient dignity, without censure; allowing, not enduring. Gundhalinu watched her watch Herne through the endless moment, his own feelings un analyzable He tensed as Herne pushed himself abruptly to his feet, swaying… stayed where he was, as Herne dropped clumsily, jarringly, onto one knee before Moon. “Arienrhod .” He murmured something, inaudible to any ears but hers. Gundhalinu glanced at Persipone; her flower-lidded eyes widened, answering his amazement with her own. She made a crazy-sign in the air, shook her head.