The Snow Queen Part 28

"If you're really in love with her, BZ, then it doesn't have to be a problem." She smiled encouragingly. "Marry her. Take her off as your wife."

"I can't." He picked up a spine-sharp probe from the tray at the end of the table, tested it against his palm.

She said hastily, "You're not going to let those hypocritical sn.o.bsa""

"It's not that." He stiffened. "And you will not speak of the Hegemony's leaders in such a manner. They had every right to criticize me."

Jerusha opened her mouth, closed it again.

"Moon wouldn't marry me." He put the probe down again. "She's a" uh, pledged," as though that unofficial bond was still improper hi some part of his mind. "To her cousin ... First Secretary Sirus's son." He looked toward the doorway again, incredulously. "She's hi love with him. She's been trying all this time to get to Carbuncle to look for him." He spoke the facts flatly, like someone reading a report. "His name is Sparks Dawntreader."

"Sparks?"

"You know him?"

"Yes. And so do you. We saved him from slavers once, the day of your last visit to the palace. After that Arienrhod picked him up; he's been one of her favorites at court ever since. And it's turned him rotten."

Gundhalinu frowned. "Then it's possible..."

"What is?"

"Moon thinks he's become Starbuck."

"Starbuck!" Jerusha put a hand to her forehead. "Yes a" yes, it does fit. Thank you, G.o.ds! And thank you." She turned back to him grimly. "I've been trying to learn who Starbuck is, so I can nail him for murder, and illegally killing mers."

"Murder?" Gundhalinu started.

She nodded. "He murdered a dillyp, or let his Hounds do it. And I thought he'd murdered Moon too ... but it's still enough. This time I'll sting Arienrhod where it hurts!" So yorfve gone rottener than I ever dreamed, Dawntreader. She saw in her mind a battered boy with a smashed flute, a killer in black against the image of a corpse-strewn sh.o.r.e. Never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine you'd fall so high.

"I a" promised Moon that we'd find him ... help him, if we could. The Change will get him anyway, if we can't."

"Don't be so sure of that. So Moon still wants him back, even after what she must have seen him do on that beach?" Jerusha was struck by the sudden disconcerting realization that Sparks had belonged to both Arienrhod and Moon ... and still did. Arienrhod's clone.

"How did you know about that?" Gundhalinu said.

"Never mind." Jerusha reached out, touched a conical metal device attached to sensor pads.

"She says she still loves him. You don't simply stop, after years... She only wants to know whether he feels the same way about her." A glimmer of lost hope surfaced.

Is that really all she wants? "I can't let her loose in the city, BZ." Jerusha shook her head, fingering bra.s.s on her collar. "I'm sorry. But I can't risk it."

"I don't understand. She's not going to contaminate anyone. I'll stay with her until we find him." "And then what?"

He lifted his hands, dropped them again. "I don't know... Commander, the Change is almost here, and when it happens it's not going to matter whether she's been off world or not. The Summers hate the whole idea. She was only on Kharemough a few weeks. What harm can she do?"

"You're asking me what harm a sibyl can do here, when she knows the reason for her existence?" almost angrily. "If we manage to pick up Starbuck, she can share a cell with him. But otherwise, believe me, it's better for all concerned if she never sees him again, and he never sees her."

"I can't believe I'm hearing that from you." The words were heavy with sullen accusation.

"And I can't believe I'm hearing you say she's no threat, Gundhalinu! What the h.e.l.l's gotten into you?" Don't push me, BZ. Be a good Blue, and accept it; don't make me hurt you now.

"I care about her. It seems to me that ought to mean something." He began to cough, pressing his chest.

"More than your duty to the law?"

"She's just one innocent Summer girl! Why the h.e.l.l can't we leave it alone?" It had the sound of a man in torment; Jerusha realized that he was his own most unforgiving inquisitor.

"She's not just another Summer, BZ," she said with heavy reluctance. "Haven't you ever noticed how much she resembles Arienrhod?" His expression said that she was out of her mind.

"I'm serious, Gundhalinu! I have every reason to believe the Queen got herself cloned somehow. And the only reason she could possibly have for that would be that she doesn't want Whiter to end." She told him everything, every detail of the circ.u.mstantial evidence. "So you see a" Moon is a sibyl. I can't risk letting Arienrhod get her hands on a" on herself, carrying a deadly weapon like that. She's doing all she can to hold on to her power." And go on corrupting everything she touches on this world. "But I'm doing anything I can to make sure she doesn't get away with it. And that includes keeping Moon out of her hands."

"I can't believe that." Gundhalinu shook his head, and she realized that he couldn't. "Moon a" Moon is like no one I ever met. She's nothing like Arienrhod! She cares about everyone, everything a" and they feel it in her. If there's a spark of decency hi a man or woman she makes it catch fire. They fall in love with her ... they can't help it." An inane smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

Jerusha grimaced. "For G.o.ds' sakes, BZ, n.o.body's that wonderful."

"She is. Just talk to her."

"I'd better not even look at her, if she's all you claim. No wonder they say 'love is blind,'" gently. She felt her own apologetic smile grow as healthy resentment turned his mouth into a line. "Your perspective is out of synch, BZ, that's all. You need a good meal and a lot of sleep, and time to believe you're back in the world you belong to."

"Don't patronize me!" He hit the instrument tray, things leaped and glittered. Jerusha winced. "I know where I am, and I don't belong here any more! I'm not fit to be a police inspector, I'm not fit to belong to the human race. All I want is to keep the one promise I'm still capable of keeping, to the one person who doesn't give a d.a.m.n what I've become. And now you're trying to tell me she's a monster; and that I have to keep her from the one thing she wants when it's almost in her hands!"

"I'm telling you it's your duty as a police officer to protect the Hegemony! That has to come first. You can't start bending the law to fit your personal tastes. It doesn't work that way." I should know.

"Then I resign."

"I don't accept your resignation. You're in no state to offer it a" and you're too valuable to me. I need every man I've got until that final ship goes up." She knew as she spoke that there was infinitely more at stake: a career, a man's self-respect, maybe even his life. "Listen to me; please, BZ. You know I wouldn't have told you all this unless I believed it. Arienrhod is a threat!" And a monster and a disease. "She's a danger to the Hegemony, and that makes Moon a danger," whatever she is. "And Starbuck is a vicious murderer, who's killed whatever Sparks Dawntreader once was as surely as he's killed a thousand mers. Think, Gundhalinu, think about it! You're still a good officer a" you can't deny that you're neglecting your duty. And you're not doing Moon a favor to turn her over to them." Reason began to seep back into Gundhalinu's eyes, and a dark resolve. Stay with me, BZ.

Moon reappeared in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder, her face pinched with frustration and disappointment. Beyond her, Sirus was leaving the outer room. d.a.m.n, not when I've almost won! Jerusha turned back to Gundhalinu, saw with abrupt relief that his expression had not changed. "BZ," she whispered, "you don't have to be the one. I'll have her taken in by someone else. Stay here until they've treated you. You need rest anda""

"I'll do it." He spoke as though she did not exist. He pushed bun self off of the table, stood down unsteadily, gathering himself to his duty. "They've already treated me, Commander. I'm fine," absently. "I have to do this; have to do it now, before I change my mind." His freckles stood out like stars, anemic white against the darkness of his skin.

Moon looked at him, stopped where she was across the room.

"BZ?".

Gundhalinu said quietly, "Moon, you're under arrest."

Chapter 36.

Moon huddled at the very edge of the seat, pressed against the curving window, as the shuttle car began to move soundlessly out of the star port station. There was a handful of other people in the car, I mainly technicians going off duty, going to join the Festival crowds I hi the city. Carbuncle a" she had reached the end of the journey that I had taken so long, and cost so much. She looked ahead into the sucking blackness through a progression of pulsing golden rings, I blinking each time the car threaded a ring like a silent needle ... blinking and blinking, to keep her vision clear. Betrayed. Betrayed ..

I She twisted her hands again with impotent fury, feeling the cold, I unyielding binders bite into her wrists. Gundhalinu sat beside her, I separated from her by an unbridgeable gap of betrayal and Duty. I What had that woman said to him? Or had he always meant to do it? She glanced at him, looked away again abruptly when she found him still watching her. Misery was in his eyes now, soft and yielding, not the unforgiving iron of Inspector Gundhalinu that she could beat against with honest rage. She could not look at his misery, afraid of becoming lost in it; drawn down into the memory of those all-too human eyes touching her face hi the dawn-light, needing her, wanting her, asking but never demanding ... the memory of how she had almost answered them ... almost...

Let him suffer! ... d.a.m.n you, you liar, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d; I trusted you. How could you do this to me! Her head b.u.mped the window in rhythmic frustration. He was taking her to jail; and hi a few more days his people would take her from this world again forever, abandon her to a lifelong exile on some other planet. He had even lied to PalaThion, telling her that the medics had treated him so that she would let him do this job himself. And she had heard him volunteer a" volunteer a" to bring hi Sparks as well; to do his penance by letting her lover be charged with murder and sent away to some h.e.l.l world prison colony for the rest of Ms life ... if he could be found in time. And if he couldn't be found ...

She had told First Secretary Sirus everything, trying not to hate him, and she had seen the light-echo from a distant time in this same place shine out in him as she told him of the medal that bore his name, and his son... "He always wore it; he always wanted to be like you, to learn the secrets of the universe."

He had laughed with startled pleasure, wanting to know where his son was now, and whether they could meet. She had told him hesitantly, that he could and would see Sparks at the Snow Queen's court. Sirus had been born, like Sparks, after the celebration of an official visit by the a.s.sembly on Samathe; at the Prime Minister's next visit he had taken his nearly middle-aged son with him on a whim. She saw the possibilities for his own son registering in Sirus's mind, and with suddenly tangling hope and fear she had told him the rest: "... and Starbuck will be sacrificed with the Queen at the end of the Festival, unless someone saves him." She had waited for the shock to register, and then, turning all her willpower on him, "You can save him! He's the Prime Minister's grandson, your son, no one would dare execute him if you ordered them to let him live!"

But Sirus had stepped back from her with a smile of grief. "I'm sorry, Moon ... niece. Truly I am. But I can't help you. As much as I want toa"" his fingers twitched. "There's nothing I can do. We're figureheads, Moon! Images, idols, toys a" we don't run the Hegemony; we simply decorate it. You'd have to change the Change itself, and the ritual of the Change is far too important to be disrupted at my whim." He looked down.

"Buta""

"I'm sorry." He sighed, and shrugged, hands empty. "If there's anything I can do to help that's within my power, I'll do it; just contact me, and let me know. But I can't perform miracles ... I wouldn't even know how to try. I wish you'd never told me this." He had turned away and left her standing alone.

Alone ... In all her life she had never felt so alone. The shuttle car showed, coming into the light at the tunnel's end, and brought them to a sighing stop. Looking out she could see an immense manmade cavern, a wide, harshly lit platform. Its walls were painted with lurid stripes, a heartless, futile attempt at celebration. The plat form was deserted, except for three well-armed security guards; access to the star port was even more strictly limited tonight than usual. They had reached Carbuncle, but she had no impression at all of its real ident.i.ty.

The technicians left the car in a laughing, elbowing knot; one or two glanced back briefly before they went on across the platform. Gundhalinu stood up, coughing heavily, and gestured her to her feet, still without speaking to her. She followed the technicians' path, head down, lost hi the silence of questions without answers. At the far side of the platform were elevators of various sizes. The technicians had already disappeared into one. Gundhalinu still wore his blood-stained coat, and a borrowed helmet; the guards studied his own identification more closely than they looked at his prisoner.

The lift took them up, and up and up, until Moon felt her empty stomach turn over in protest. There were no stops along the way. The elevator shaft rose through the hollow core of one of Carbuncle's supporting pylons, into the heart of the lower city a" where goods had come from and gone to the entire Hegemony ... but would no longer.

The doors slid open as they reached the city level. Noise and color and raucous celebration rushed in to overwhelm them like a joyous madman. Men and women danced past them to the glaring music of an unseen band; locals and off worlders together, filling the bare, littered loading docks with motion and every imaginable cont, trast of clothing and being. Moon shrank back, felt Gundhalinu recoil beside her, as the cacophony shattered senses attuned to the fragile silence of the snow.

Gundhalinu swore in Sandhi, breaking his own silence in self defense. But he took her arm, pushed her out of the elevator before the doors could close again. He led her along the edges of the mauling crowd, navigating the interminable gauntlet to the warehouses where the crowded Street began. At last he stopped her, finding shelter in a pool of quiet, the corner s.p.a.ce between two buildings. He backed her resolutely up to the wall. "Moona""

She turned her face away, drowning his face in images. Don't tell me you're sorry a" don't!

"I'm sorry. I had to do it." He took her hands in his. His thumb pressed the hollow lock on the crosspiece of the binders, they snapped open. He took them off and tossed them away.

She looked down at her wrists in disbelief, shook them, looked up into his face again. "I thought a" I thoughta""

"It was the only way I could get us here to the city, past security, once the Commander recognized you." He shook his head, wiped his face with the back of a hand.

"Holy Mother! BZa"" She took a deep breath, clenching her hands. "You lie too well."

His mouth quirked. "So much for Good Blue Gundhalinu." He reached up and took off his borrowed helmet, patted it almost reverently. "n.o.body understands that it doesn't fit any more." His voice turned harsh with self-recrimination. He bent over and set the helmet down on the pavement.

"BZ, no one needs to know." She pulled at his arm with sudden understanding. "Can you say I slipped away in the crowd?"

He straightened up, his mouth like a knife cut, his eyes like cinders; and she saw that this was not the catalyst, but only the precipitate of his change. "The Commander told me what she knows about your cousin. We can't get at him in the palace, but she said he visits a woman named Ravengla.s.s sometimes, in the Citron Alley. That's as good a starting place as any." He stood away from her, and away from himself, retreating onto safe ground. "I guess we can go as we are; n.o.body will look at us twice in this mob." He frowned abruptly, looking at her. "Braid your hair. It's too much like a" it's too obvious."

She obeyed, not understanding.

"Hold on to me, and whatever you do, don't get separated in this crowd. We've got half a city to go, and it's all uphill." He put out his good hand; she clasped it tightly in her own.

They made their way up the Street, a.s.saulted by the appalling intensity of Carbuncle's high spirits. The Winters celebrated with a kind of uninhibited desperation, because it was the last Festival they would ever know; the Summers celebrated the coming of the Change that would set their world right. The sight of kleeskin boots and slickers, the weather-burned faces of the countless islanders who had made this pilgrimage, filled Moon's eyes and clogged her throat with longing. She found herself searching the faces for one she knew, always disappointed a" until she glimpsed a red head bobbing, a youth in a slicker moving away. She struggled to break Gundhalinu's grip, but he would not let her go. Shaking his head, he towed her up the Street, until she realized for herself that there were half a hundred redheaded Summers adrift hi this sea of faces.

Vendors cried their wares, people danced hi human chains, performers and musicians climbed boxes and stairs to win the fickle worship of the pa.s.sing crowd. It was the middle of the night, but no one seemed to know it from the middle of the day a" Moon the least among them. The Prime Minister had arrived, and from now until the night of masks the revels would only grow wilder.

Offworlder storekeepers sold the last of their stock for near nothing, or gave it away, piled clothes and food and unrecognizable exotica hi their doorways, TAKE IT AWAY. Winters wrapped in yards of family totem-creatures paraded along the street-center, alight with hologrammic cold fire. Moon yelped as a firecracker I burst beside her, wrote her name in the air with an incandescent I I sparkler she found unexpectedly in her hand. Fistfights and worse fights broke out along the alleys as the electric tensions that lay be I neath this Festival's melting valences exploded in sudden, petty violence. Moon had to struggle to keep her own hold on Gundhalinu as ' a fight broke out beside them and his instincts started him toward it. But a regulation Blue hi a shining helmet had claimed it for his own, I and Gundhalinu changed direction again with wrenching urgency. v As they went on up the Street, Moon felt the crowd spirit infect f her with giddy optimism, pummeling her with the absolute awareness that she was here at last a" this was the city, this was Carbuncle, and it was a place of unimaginable delight. She had come in time, she had come hi the time of Change, when probabilities broke down and anything became possible. She had come to find Sparks, to change the Change, and she would.

I But more and more she found herself leading Gundhalhiu, pulling him against the current of humanity, his own senses and endurance failing him as hers heightened. She looked back at his sweating face, falling from the heights as she heard him cough and remembered that he had thrown away rest and treatment to help her. But he shook his head as she slowed, pushed her on again, "Almost there."

They reached the Citron Alley at last. Moon found a store that was still open, asked the shop man eagerly for Fate Ravengla.s.s. He looked at her face with peculiar surprise; she drew the neck of her tunic together over her tattoo. "Fate's right next door, little lady-but you won't find her in. She's seeing to her masks, all around the city. Come back tomorrow, maybe you'll have better luck."

She has to be in! How can she be gone a" ? Moon nodded, speechless with disappointment.

Gundhalinu leaned against the peeling building wall. "Do you-have anything for a cough?"

The shop man shrugged. "Not much now. An amulet for good health."

Gundhalinu gave a grunt of disgust and pushed away from the wall. "Come on, let's ask around the h.e.l.ls."

"No." Moon shook her head, caught his arm, stopping him. "We'll a" we'll find somewhere to sleep first. And come back here tomorrow."

He hesitated. "You're sure?"

She nodded, lying, but knowing that she would be utterly lost here in the city, if she lost him now.

They found refuge at last with his former landlady: a pillowed, mothering woman who took pity on him, once she believed that he was more than a ghost. She put them in the rooms that belonged to her grown son. "I know you won't steal anything, Inspector Gundhalinu!"

Gundhalinu grimaced wryly as the door clicked shut, granting them privacy at last. "She doesn't seem to care whether I brought you here for immoral purposes."

Moon bent her head. "What does that mean?" blankly.

His smile grew wryer. "Nothing, I suppose, in this town. G.o.ds, I want to see hot, running water again! I want to feel clean again." He turned away and went into the bathroom; after a moment she heard water running.

Moon ate her share of the fisherman's-pie they had panhandled on the street, sitting by the window with her back to the room's self conscious schizophrenia a" a room like all of Winter, caught between the Sea and the stars. The rooms were on the second floor, and she looked down on the Festival from above, watching humanity course like blood through the arteries of the city. So many ... there were so many.

Cut off from the life support of its artificial vitality, she felt her endurance break down again, lost her confidence that she would ever find that one face in the thousands. The sibyl machinery had brought her to Carbuncle; but what did it expect of her now? Aspundh had not been able to tell her anything about the way in which it acted; only that it was the most unpredictable and least understood of the things a sibyl might experience. She had believed that it guided her; but now that she had come to the city there was no blinding revelation to help her: Had it abandoned her, forgotten her, left her to count grains of sand on the endless sh.o.r.e? How would she find Sparks without its help?

And what if she did find him? What had he become a" a coldblooded killer, doing the dirty work of Winter's Queen, even sharing her bed? What would she say to him if she found him; what could he say to her? He had rejected her twice already, on Neith, and on that hideous sh.o.r.e ... how often did he have to tell her that she was no longer his love? Had she really gone through so much, just to hear him say it to her face? Her hand rose to her cheek. Why can't I let go? Why can't I admit it?

The curtain at the bathroom doorway pushed back and Gundhalinu came out, clean and freshly shaven, but modestly redressed in the same filthy clothes. He stretched out on the bed-sofa with a sigh, as though it had taken the last bit of his strength. Moon shut herself into the tiny washroom in turn, to hide from him the doubts that she could not speak and could not disguise. She showered; the steaming water soothed her crippling tension, but it could not wash her guilt away.

She came out into the larger room again, wearing only her tunic, drying her hair and her eyes; expecting to find Gundhalinu asleep. But he stood at the window as she had stood.

She joined him. They stood side by side, not touching, in silent communion before the diamond panes, watching the street below, listening as the Festival rattled against the gla.s.s.

"Why did I come here? Why did it make me come, when there wasn't any reason?"

Gundhalinu glanced at her, frowning in surprise.

"What am I going to do, even if I find him? I've already lost him. He doesn't want me any more. He has a Queena"" she pressed her hand against her mouth, "and he's willing to die for her."

"Maybe he only wants Arienrhod because he doesn't have you." Again Gundhalinu searched her face, looking for something she didn't understand.

"How can you say that? She's a Queen."

"But she'll never be you." Hesitantly he touched her fingers. "And maybe that's why he doesn't want to go on living."

She caught his hand in hers, pressed it to her cheek, kissed it. "Thou make st me a" valued feel, when I wind-drift am ... when I lost have been, for so long." She felt her face burn.