Snow Queen

380 Pages·1984·1.76 MB·English

by  Joan Vinge

Joan D. Vinge
Snow Queen Book 1 - The Snow Queen
0-7088-8075-4 / 1980

Joan D. Vinge received a degree in anthropology from San Diego State
University in 1971 and considers herself an “anthropologist of the future.” She
worked briefly as a salvage archaeologist before turning to writing. Her novella
Eyes of Amber won the Hugo Award in 1978, and her stories “Fireship” and
“View from a Height” were Hugo nominees in 1979. Ms. Vinge lives in
Brooklyn, New York.
To the Lady, who gives, and who takes away.
I would like to gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and artistry of Hans
Christian Andersen, whose folk tale The Snow Queen gave me the seeds of this
story; and Robert Graves, whose book The White Goddess provided me with the
rich Earth in which it grew. And I would like to thank those people who helped
me weed, and tend, and harvest the fruits of my labor: my husband Vernor, and
my editors Don Bensen and Jim Frenkel, without whose perceptive and sensitive
suggestions this book would not have grown as strong or as truly. I would also
like to thank my father, for his love of science fiction; and my mother, for
teaching me a woman’s strength and giving me the freedom to become.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
The following names of characters and places are pronounced as shown:
Tiamat (TEE-uh-maht)
Arienrhod (AIRY-en-rode)
Geia Jerusha PaleThion (GAI-uh-jer-OO-shuh PAL-ub-THY-on) Gundhalinu
(Gun-dah-LEE-noo)
Kharemough (KARE-uh-moff)
Kharemoughi (KARE-uh-MAWG-ee)
Danaquil Lu (DAN-uh-keel LOO)
Ngenet Miroe (eng-EN-it MIR-row)
Persiponë (Per-SIP-oh-nay)
Elsevier (EL-seh-veer)
LiouxSked (LOO-sked)
Sandhi (SAHN-dee)
Mantagnes (MAN-TAG-nees)
(Oy-ARE-zuh-ball)
TierPardée (TEER-par-DEE)
Taryd Roh (TARE-id ROW)
“… strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few
there be that find it.”
- Matthew 7:14
“You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have
both.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

- Prologue -
The door swung shut silently behind them, cutting off the light, music, and
wild celebration of the ballroom. The sudden loss of sight and hearing made him
claustrophobic. He tightened his hands over the instrument kit he carried beneath
his cloak.
He heard her amused laughter in the darkness at his side, and light burst
around him again, opening up the small room they stood in now. They were not
alone. His tension made him start, even though he was expecting it, even though
it had happened to him five times already in this interminable night, and would
happen several times more. It was happening in a sitting room this time on the
boneless couch that obtruded into a forest of dark furniture legs dusted with
gold. The irrelevant thought struck him that he had seen a greater range of styles
and taste in this one night than he had probably seen in forty years back on
Kharemough.
But he was not back on Kharemough; he was in Carbuncle, and this Festival
night was the strangest night he would ever spend, if he lived to be a hundred.
Sprawled on the couch in unselfconscious abandon were a man and a woman,
both of them deeply asleep now from the drugged wine in the half-empty bottle
lying on its side on the rug. He stared at the purple stain that crept across the
sculptured carpet-pile, trying not to intrude any more than he must on their
privacy. “You’re certain that this couple has also been intimate?”
“Quite certain. Absolutely certain.” His companion lifted the white-feathered
mask from her shoulders, revealing a mass of hair almost as white coiled like a
nest of serpents above her eager, young girl’s face. The mask was a grotesque
contrast to the sweetness of that face: the barbed ripping beak of a predatory
bird, the enormous black-pupiled eyes of a night hunter that glared at him with
the promise of life and death hanging in the balance… No. When he looked into
her eyes, there was no contrast. There was no difference. “You Kharemoughis
are so self-righteous.” She threw off her white feathered cape. “And such
hypocrites.” She laughed again; her laughter was both bright and dark.
He removed his own less elaborate mask reluctantly: an absurd fantasy
creature, half fish, half pure imagination. He did not like having to expose his
expression.
She searched his face in the pitiless lamplight, with feigned innocence. “Don’t
tell me, Doctor, that you really don’t like to watch?”
He swallowed his indignation with difficulty. “I’m a biochemist, Your
Majesty, not a voyeur.”
“Nonsense.” The smile that was far too old for the face formed on her mouth.
“All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become doctors? Except for
the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the blood and the pain.”
Afraid to respond, he only moved past her, crossed the carpet to the couch and
put his instrument kit on the floor. Beyond these walls the city of Carbuncle
climaxed its celebration of the Prime Minister’s cyclical visit to this world with a
night of joyous abandon. He had never expected to find himself spending it with
this world’s queen and certainly not spending it doing what he was about to do.
The sleeping woman lay with her face toward him. He saw that she was
young, of medium height, strong and healthy. Her gently smiling face was
deeply tanned by sun and weather beneath the tangled, sandy hair. The rest of
her body was pale; he supposed she kept it well protected from the bitter cold
beyond the city’s walls. The man beside her was a youthful thirty, he judged,
with dark hair and light skin, and could have been either a local or an off
worlder, but he was of no concern now. Their Festival masks looked down in
hollow-eyed censure, like impotent guardian gods resting on the couch back. He
dabbed the woman’s shoulder with antiseptic, made the tiny incision to insert the
tracer beneath her skin, doing the simple procedure first to reassure himself. The
Queen stood watching intently, silent now that he needed silence.
Noise concentrated beyond the locked door; he heard slightly slurred voices
protesting loudly. He shrank like an animal in a trap, waiting for discovery.
“Don’t worry, Doctor.” The Queen laid a light, reassuring hand on his arm.
“My people will see that we’re not disturbed.”
“Why the hell did I let myself be talked into this?” more to himself than to
her. He turned back to his work, but his hands were unsteady.
“Twenty-five extra years of youth can be very persuasive.”
“A lot of good it’ll do me if I spend them all in some penal colony!”
“Get hold of yourself, Doctor. If you don’t finish what you’ve started tonight,
you won’t have earned your twenty-five years anyway. The agreement stands
only while I have at least one perfectly normal clone-child somewhere among
the Summer folk on this planet.”
“I’m aware of the terms.” He finished with the small incision and sealed it.
“But I hope you understand that a clone implant under these circumstances is not
only illegal, it’s highly unpredictable. This is a difficult procedure. The odds of
producing a clone who is even a reasonable replica of the original person are not
particularly good under the most controlled conditions, let alone “
“Then the more implants you perform tonight, the better off we’ll both be.
Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” tasting self-disgust. “I suppose it is.” He rolled the
sleeping woman carefully onto her back and reached into his kit again.

- 1 -
Here on Tiamat, where there is more water than land, the sharp edge between
ocean and sky is blurred; the two merge into one. Water is drawn up from the
shining plate of the sea and showers down again in petulant squalls. Clouds pass
like emotion across the fiery red faces of the Twins, and are shaken off,
splintering into rainbows: dozens of rainbows every day, until the people cease
to be amazed by them. Until no one stops to wonder, no one looks up…
“It’s a shame,” Moon said suddenly, pulling hard on the steering oar.
“What is?” Sparks ducked down as the flapping sail filled and the boom swept
across over his head. The outrigger canoe plunged like a wing fish “It’s a shame
you aren’t paying attention. What do you want to do, sink us?”
Moon frowned, the moment’s mood broken. “Oh, drown yourself.”
“I’m half-drowned already; that’s the trouble.” He grimaced at the water
lapping the ankles of their waterproof kleeskin over boots and picked up the
bailer again. The last squall had drowned his good nature, anyway, she thought,
along with the sodden supply baskets. Or maybe it was only fatigue. They had
been at sea on this journey for nearly a month, creeping from island to island
along the Windward chain. And for the last day they had been beyond the
Windwards, beyond the charts they knew, striking out across the expanse of open
ocean toward three islands that kept to themselves, a sanctuary of the Sea
Mother. Their boat was tiny for such far ranging, and they had only the stars and
a rough current-chart of crisscrossed sticks to guide them. But they were
children of the Sea as truly as they were the children of their birth-mothers; and
because they were on a sacred quest, Moon knew that She would be kind.
Moon watched Spark’s bobbing head catch fire as the pinwheeled binary of
Tiamat’s double sun broke the clouds, to kindle flame in the red of his hair and
his sparse, newly starting beard; throw the soft-edged shadow of his slim,
muscular body down into the bottom of the boat. She sighed, unable to keep hold
of her irritation when she looked at him, and reached out tenderly to finger a red,
shining braid.
“Rainbows… I was talking about rainbows. Nobody appreciates them. What if
there was never another rainbow?” She brushed back the hood of her mottled
slicker and tugged loose the laces at her throat. Braids as white as cream spilled
out and down over her back. Her eyes were the color of mist and moss agate.
She looked up through the crab-claw sail, squinting as she sorted tumbled cloud
from sky to find vaulting ribbons of fractured light, dimmed here to nothingness,
brightening there until their banners doubled and redoubled.
Sparks dumped another shellful of water overboard, sending it home, before
he lifted his head to follow her gaze. Even without its sun-browning, his skin
was dark for an islander’s. But lashes and eyebrows as pale as her own tightened
against the glare, above eyes that changed color like the sea. “Come on. We’ll
always have rainbows, Cuz. As long as we have the Twins and the rain. A simple
case of diffraction; I showed you-”
She hated it when he talked tech-the unthinking arrogance that came into his
voice. “I know that. I’m not stupid.” She jerked the coppery braid sharply.
“Ow!”
“But I’d still rather hear Gran tell us that it was the Lady’s promise of plenty,
instead of hearing that trader turn it into something without any point at all. And
so would you. Wouldn’t you, my star child. Admit it!”
“No!” He beat her hand away; anger blazed. “Don’t make fun of that, damn
it!” He turned his back on her, splashing. She pictured his knuckles whitening
over the corroded crosses-inside-a-circle: the token his off worlder father had
given to his mother at the last Festival. “Mother of Us All!”
It was the one thing that drove between them like a blade-their awareness of a
heritage that he did not share with her, or with anyone they knew. They were
Summers, and their people rarely had contact with the tech-loving Winters who
consorted with the off worlders except at the Festivals, when the adventurous
and joyful from all over this world gathered in Carbuncle; when they put on
masks and put off their differences, to celebrate the Prime Minister’s cyclical
visit and a tradition that was far older.
Their two mothers, who were sisters, had gone to Carbuncle to the last
Festival, and returned to Neith carrying, as her mother had told her, “the living
memory of a magic night.” She and Sparks had been born on the same day; his
mother had died in childbirth. Their grandmother had raised them both while
Moon’s mother was at sea with the fishing fleet. They had grown up together
like twins, she often thought: strange, changeling twins growing up under the
vaguely uneasy gaze of the stolid, provincial islanders. But there had always
been a part of Sparks that she was shut off from, that she could not share: the
part of him that heard the stars whisper. He bartered surreptitiously with passing
traders for mechanical trinkets from other worlds, wasted days taking them apart
and putting them back together, finally throwing them into the sea in a fit of self
disgust along with propitiating effigies made of leaves.
Moon kept his tech secrets from Gran and the world, grateful that he at least
shared them with her, but nursing a secret resentment. For all she knew her own
father could have been a Winter or even an off worlder, but she was content with
building a future that fit under her own sky. Because of that it was hard for her to
be patient with Sparks, who was not, who was caught in the space between the
heritage he lived and the one he saw in starlight.
“Oh, Sparks.” She leaned forward, rested a chilly hand on his shoulder,
massaging the knotted muscles through the thickness of cloth and oilskins. “I’m
not teasing. I didn’t mean to; I’m sorry,” thinking, I’d rather have no father at all
than live with a shadow all my life. “Don’t be sad. Look there!” Blue sparks
danced on the ocean beyond red sparks gleaming in his hair. Wingfish flashed
and soared above the swells of the Mother Sea, and she saw the island clearly
now, leeward, the highest of three. Serpentine lace marked the distant meeting of
sea and shore. “The choosing-place! And look, mers!” She blew a kiss in awed
reverence.
Long, sinuous, brindle-colored necks were breaking the water surface around
and ahead of them; ebony eyes studied them with inscrutable knowledge. The
mers were the Sea’s children, and a sailor’s luck. Their presence could only
mean that the Lady was smiling.
Sparks looked back at her, suddenly smiling too, and caught her hand.
“They’re leading us in-She knows why we’ve come. We’ve really come, we’re
going to be chosen at last.” He pulled the coiled shell flute out of the pouch at
his hip and set free a joyous run of notes. The mers’ heads began to weave with
the music, and their own eerie whistles and cries sang counterpoint. The old tales
said that they lamented a terrible loss, and a terrible wrong; but no two tales
agreed on what the loss or the wrong had been.
Moon listened to their music, not finding it sad at all. Her own throat was
suddenly too tight for song: She saw in her mind another shore, half their
lifetime ago, where two children had picked up a dream lying like a rare coiled
shell in the sand at the feet of a stranger. She followed the memory back through
time…
Moon and Sparks ran barefoot along the rough walls between the shallow
harbor pens, a net slung swaying like a hammock from shoulder to slim shoulder
between them. Their deft, callused feet slapped and splashed along the piled-
stone pathways, immune to bruises and the lapping icy water. The klee in the
pens, usually as sluggish as stones on the weedy bottom, surfaced with ungainly
haste to watch the children pass. They blew spray and grunted with hunger; but
the net was empty, its burden of dried sea hair already dumped into the family
stock-pens for the midday feeding.
“Hurry up, Sparkie!” Moon, in the lead as usual, pulled the netting taut
between them, hauling her shorter cousin along like a reluctant load of fish. She
swept the white fall of her bangs back from her face, eyes on the deep-water
channel that drove straight in to shore beyond the fish yards Already the tall tops
of the cloven sails-all she could see of the fishing fleet from here-were sweeping
ahead. “We’ll never get to the docks first!” She pulled harder, in frustration.
“I’m hurrying, Moon. It’s almost like my mother coming home, too!” Sparks
found an extra burst of speed; she felt him catch up behind her, heard him
panting. “Do you think Gran will make honey cake “For sure!” Leaping, she
almost stumbled. “I saw her getting out the pot.”
They ran on, dancing over the stones toward the gleaming noonday beach and
the village beyond. Moon pictured the brown, smiling face of her mother as they
had last seen her, three months ago: thick sand-colored braids piled on her head,
hidden under a dark knit cap; the thick high-necked sweater, slicker, and heavy
boots that made her indistinguishable from her crew as she tossed them a last
kiss, while the double-hulled fishing boat leaned into the winds of sunrise.
But today she was home again. They would all go down to the village hall
with the other fishing families, to celebrate and dance. And then, very late at
night, she would curl up in her mother’s lap (although she was getting too big to
curl up in her mother’s lap), held close in the sturdy arms; watching Sparks
through heavy lids to see if he fell asleep first, in Gran’s arms. There would be
the warm snap and whisper of flames on the hearth, the smell of sea and ships
that clung to her mother’s hair, the hypnotic flow of voices as Gran reclaimed
her own daughter from the Sea, who was Mother to them all.
Moon leaped down into the soft, golden-brown beach sand. Sparks thumped
down from the wall behind her, their shadows tangling in the noonday glare.
With her eyes fixed on the cluttered stone houses of the village and the boats
dropping sail in the bay, she almost darted past the stranger who stood waiting,
watching, as they came. Almost Sparks collided with Moon as she slid to a stop.
“Look out, fish brain!” A cloud of sand exploded around their ankles.
She threw her arms around him for balance, squeezed the indignation out of
him as her own amazement tightened her hold. Sparks pulled free, subsiding; the
net dropped, forgotten, like the village, the bay, their reunion. Moon tugged at
the hem of her hand-me down sweater, knitting her fingers into the heavy rustred
yarn.
The woman smiled down at them, the radiant oval of her face touched with
windburn above her ancient gray parka, the thick pants and clumsy boots worn
by any islander. But she was not from Neith, not simply from any island…
“Did-did you come out of the Sea?” Moon gasped. Sparks gaped beside her.
The woman laughed; her laughter broke the spell of otherworldliness like
window glass. “No… only across it, on a ship.”
“Why?”
“Who are you?” Their questions ran together.
And in answer to both, the woman held out the medallion she wore on a chain:
a barbed trefoil like a bouquet of fish hooks, glittering with the darkly sinister
beauty of a reptile’s eye. “Do you know what this is?” She went down on one
knee in the sand, her black braids dropping forward. They shuffled closer,
blinking.
“Sibyl…?” Moon whispered timidly, seeing Sparks clutch his own medal out
of the corner of her eye. But then her gaze was wholly the woman’s, and she
knew why the dark, compelling eyes seemed to open on infinity. A sibyl was the
earthly channel for supernatural wisdom, chosen through the Lady’s Own
judgment, who by temperament and training had the strength to withstand a holy
visitation.
The woman nodded. “I am Clavally Bluestone Summer.” She set her hands
against her forehead. “Ask, and I will answer.”
They did not ask, dazed by the knowledge that she would-could-answer any
question they could imagine; or that the Lady Herself would answer them with
Clavally’s lips, while the sibyl was swept away in a trance.
“No questions?” Formality fell away again, held at bay by her good humor.
“Then tell me who you are, who already know everything you need to know?”
“I’m Moon,” Moon said, pushing at her bangs. “Moon Dawntreader Summer.
This’s my cousin, Sparks Dawntreader Summer, and I don’t know enough to ask
about anything!” she finished miserably.
“I do.” Sparks pushed forward, holding out his medal. “What did this used to
be?”
“Input…” Clavally took it between her fingers, frowned faintly, murmuring.
Her eyes turned to smoky quartz, moved wildly, like a dreamer’s; her hand fisted
over the disc. “Sign of the Hegemony-two crosses bound within a circle
symbolize the unity of Kharemough and its seven subordinate worlds… medal
awarded for valorous service, Kispah uprising: “What all may strive for, this one
has found. To our beloved son Temmon Ashwini Sirus, this day, 9:113:07.”
Sandhi, official language of Kharemough and the Hegemony. No further
analysis.” Her head dropped forward, let go by an unseen force. She swayed
gently on her knees, sighed, sat back. “Well.”
“But what does it mean?” Sparks looked down at the disc which still danced
against his parka front, and his mouth formed an uncertain line.
Clavally shook her head. “I don’t know. The Lady only speaks through me,
not to me. That’s the Transfer-the way it is.”
Sparks’s mouth quivered.
“The Hegemony,” Moon said quickly. “What’s the Hegemony, Clavally?”
“The off worlders.” Clavally’s eyes widened slightly. “The Hegemony is what
they call themselves. So it’s an off world thing, then… I’ve never been to
Carbuncle.” Her glance went to it again. “How did this get here, so far from the
star port and the Winters?” And back to their faces, “You’re merrybegots, aren’t
you? Your mothers went to the last Festival together, and were lucky enough to
come back with you… and also this keepsake?”
Sparks nodded, as much in awe of adult logic as he was of the Lady’s trances,
“Then… my father isn’t a Summer; he isn’t even on Tiamat?”
“That I can’t tell you.” Clavally stood up. Moon saw a strange concern cross
her face as she looked back at Sparks. “But I do know that merrybegots are
specially blessed. Do you know why I’m here?”
They shook their heads.
“Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”
“Together,” Moon answered without thinking.
Again the bright laughter. “Good! I’m making this journey through the
Windwards to urge all the young Summers, before they settle into life, to
remember that they can dedicate themselves to the Sea in another way than as
fishers or farmers. They can serve the Lady by serving their fellow human
beings as sibyls, as I do. Some of us are born with a special seed inside us, and it
only waits for the Lady to touch us and make it grow. When you’re old enough,
maybe you two will hear Her call, and go to a choosing place.”
“Oh.” Moon shivered slightly. “I think I hear Her now!” She pressed cold
hands against her leaping heart, where a dream seed sprouted.
“Me too, me too!” Sparks cried eagerly. “Can we go now, can we go with you,
Clavally?”
Clavally pulled up the hood of her parka against a sudden buffet of wind. “No,
not yet. Wait a little longer; until you’re certain of what you hear.”
“How long?”
“A month?”
She rested her hands on the two small shoulders. “More like years, I think.”
“Years!” Moon protested.