Joan D. Vinge - Snow Queen 1 - Snow Queen

The Snow Queen

by

Joan D Vinge

Book Club Edition

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.

Jacket art by Leo and Diane Dillon Jacket typography by Jack

Ribik

Printed in the U.S.A.To the Lady, who gives, and who takes

away.

America

".. . strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto

life, and few there be that find it."

--New Testament, Matthew 7:14

"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall

not have both."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

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 dtiat 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.

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 ringer 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, and 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

backlrom 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 rust-red

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 Dawn treader

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 thejjiegemony-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.

"By then you'll be sure it isn't just the crying of sea birds you

hear. But always remember, in the end it won't be you who will choose

the Lady, but the Lady Who will choose you." She looked again, almost

pointedly, at Sparks.

"All right." Moon wondered at the look, and straightened her

shoulders resolutely under the hand. "We'll wait. And we'll

remember."

"And now--" the sibyl dropped her hands--"I think someone is

waiting for you."

Time began to flow forward again, and they fled, running--with

many backward glances--toward town.

"Moon, remember the last thing she said to us?" The silver play of

notes dissolved as Sparks lowered his flute and looked back, breaking

in on Moon's memory. The mers stopped their own song, looking toward

the boat.

"Clavally?" Moon guided the outrigger around the point of land

that jagged inward at the mouth of the bay. The shoreline of the

Choosing Island was as spiny as the trefoil the sibyls wore. "You

mean, that my mother was waiting for us?"

"No. That the Lady chooses us, not the other way around." Sparks

glanced toward the surf line, made his eyes come back to her face. "I

mean .. . what if She only chooses one of us? What will we do?"

"She'll choose us both!" Moon grinned. "How could She do anything

else? We're merrybegots--we're lucky."

"But what if She doesn't?" He fingered the packing of moss where

the halves of the wooden hull had been lashed together. Inseparable

... he frowned slightly. "Nobody makes you become a sibyl, do they,

just because you pass the test? We can swear to each other now, that

if only one of us is chosen, that one will turn it down. For the sake

of the other."

"For the sake of us both." Moon nodded. But She will choose us

both. She had never doubted, since that moment years ago, that she

would come to this place and hear the Lady call her. It had been her

heart's desire for half a lifetime; and she had made certain Sparks

always shared it, not letting his hopeless star dreams lead him away

from their common goal.

She put out her arm and Sparks took it somberly; they shook, hands

clasping wrists. The clasp became a hug before she knew it, and the

doubts in her heart burned away like morning fog. "Sparkie, I love

you .. . more than anything under the sky." She kissed him, tasting

salt on his lips. "Let the Sea Mother witness that you hold my

willing heart, only you, now and forever."

He repeated the words, clearly and proudly, and together they

sipped sea water from their cupped hands to complete the vow. "Nobody

can say we're still too young to pledge after this journey!" They had

pledged their love for the first time when they were barely old

enough to recite the words, and everyone had laughed. But they had

been true to each other ever since; and through the years they had

shared everything, including the hesitant, yearning inevitability of

lips touching, and hands, and flesh.. ..

Moon remembered a hidden cranny among the rocks on a leeward bay;

warm callused hands of stone cupping their shivering bodies as they

lay together in love under the bright noon, while the tide whispered

far away down the beach. Now, as then, she could feel the strength of

the need that bound them together: the heat they made between them

that held the cold loneliness of their world at bay. The union of

souls that overcame them in the final moment--the height, the

wholeness, that nothing else in their world could ever give her.

Together they would enter this new life, and at last they would

belong to their world as completely as they belonged to each other..

.. Sparks's lips brushed her ear; she leaned forward, her anps going

around him again. The boat nosed toward shore, untended.

"Do you see anything?"

Sparks checked the boat a last time where it lay beached firmly in

shells and storm wrack, beyond the high-tide line. The family totem

carved at its prow regarded him with three staring painted eyes. The

tide was still going out, but it had already exposed enough

wet-mirrored sand so that dragging the canoe up the beach had taken

away their breath. One of the mers had actually come out onto the

shore with them, let them stroke its wet, slick, brindle fur with

timid hands. He had never been close enough to touch one before; they

were as large as he was, and twice as heavy.

"Not yet--here!" Moon's voice reached him, along with the frantic

waving of her hand. She had followed the mer's floundering progress

as it moved on up the beach. "Here by the stream, a path. It must be

the one Gran told me about!"

He started across the littered beach slope toward the freshwater

outlet, abandoned shells crunching under his feet. The stream had

laid down a wide band of red silt in the ochre, cut into the red with

channels of moss-green water flow. Where it left the shore, Moon

stood waiting to start into the hills.

"We follow the stream up?"

She nodded, following the swift blue-green rise of the cloaked

land with her eyes. Naked peaks of raw red stone soared even higher.

Those islands were new on the measureless time scale of the Sea;

their spines still clawed the sky, undulled by age.

"Looks like we climb." He jammed his hands into his pockets,

uncertain.

"Yeah." Moon watched the mer start back down the beach. Her hand

tingled with the feel of its heavy fur. "We'll dance in the rigging

today." She looked back at him, suddenly very much aware of what

their presence here meant. "Well, come on," almost impatiently. "The

first step is the hardest." They took it together.

But it was a step that had been taken before, Moon thought as she

climbed .. . how many times? She found the answer engraved in the

hillsides, where the passage of feet had worn down the airy volcanic

pumice until sometimes they walked in narrow tracks eaten away to the

height of their knees. And how many have climbed it just to be

Joan D. Vinge - Snow Queen 1 - Snow Queen

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