The Snow Queen (30 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
She stared
at him, taken by surprise, but his face refused to tell her whether he was
making fun of her or not. She looked away again moodily, not knowing how to
answer him; tried to watch the pictures on the screens.
Disembodied
voices made announcements in Sandhi, and half a dozen other languages she
didn’t recognize at all. The ideo graphic symbols of written Sandhi were
incomprehensible to her, but she was learning the spoken language from tapes
that heightened recall while she listened. They opened her mind with music
while they etched the words painlessly on her unconscious; and by now she could
understand most of what she heard. But there were nuances within nuances to
this language, just as there were to the relationships between the people who
used it. A strict caste system controlled the people of this world, denning
their roles in society from the day they were born. Offworlders were immune to
its restrictions, as long as they remained aloof from them—she had been given a
ticket, over Elsevier’s pleading, for addressing a shopkeeper by his Sandhi
classification, instead of as “citizen.” More serious breaches of conduct
within the system were punishable by stiff fines or even loss of an inherited
rating. There were separate shops, restaurants, and theaters for the Technical,
Nontechnical, and Unclassified ratings, and the highest and lowest could not
even speak to each other without an intermediary. She had wondered indignantly,
clutching her ticket, why they put up with it. Elsevier had only smiled and
said, “Inertia, my dear. Most people simply aren’t unhappy enough with the
known to trade it for the unknown. TJ could never understand that.”
Moon leaned
forward on the quilt-surfaced couch as Elsevier rematerialized out of the crowd
mass.
“They’re
already boarding. We’d better go.” Elsevier waved the ticket printouts toward
the gateway at the far side of the waiting area, where passengers were
funneling into the unknown. Cress stood up with Silky; Moon followed, resigned.
“Don’t look so glum, young mistress; you won’t feel a thing. It’s all in the
hands of the traffic controllers, a shuttle’s not like a ship. More like a
crate.”
“It’s
beautiful down there, Moon. Wait until you see KR’s ornamental gardens.”
“Gardens
aren’t what I need, Elsie.” Her eyes went to the view of space again, like iron
to a lodestone. “I need to go home.”
Cress gave
Elsevier an accusing, unreadable look; she turned away from it. “Wait until you
meet KR, Moon. You’ll understand everything then.”
They
boarded the shuttle at the tail of the crowd. Moon caught a glimpse of its
tubby, boxlike exterior through the airlock’s port: It was a crate, just as
Cress had said, with no propulsion of its own. It was drawn down to the planet and
shunted back up again just like any other piece of freight, clutched in an
invisible hand of repeller-or tractor—beams from one of the planetary
distribution centers. A shipping window was a column of no-man’s space thirty
meters wide, licking out into the zone of heavy industry between Kharemough and
its moons.
On board
they were led to tiers of seats above a central floor screen that showed her a
view of the planet’s surface, misty with blue and khaki; she tried to
concentrate on the solid immensity of it, and not to remember that it was
unspeakably far below them. No one drifted weightless out of a seat even here
on board the shuttle; the Kharemoughis claimed, with unsubtle pride, that
getting rid of gravity was the hard part; they could produce it whenever they
wanted to.
The exits
sealed, the shuttle broke free from the station’s grasp and began its drop into
the tube of force. Moon sat oblivious to the muted conversations, mostly
incomprehensible, around her-oblivious to everything but the vision of the
planet’s surface rising up to meet them in mid fall An amorphorous,
cloud-swirled plate widened into ever clearer detail, while Elsevier’s hushed
voice pointed out the burnished blue seas, and the green-ochre of this world’s
islands, so huge that they shouldered aside the sea itself. The island
centrally below grew until it was all she could see, dividing and redividing
into murals of mountain, forest, farmland, all rolling inexorably into morning
... and then, before she quite realized it, a slender ring of twilit city laid
out in ripples concentric around an immense, shining, treeless plain.
“...
landing field,” Elsevier said.
At the
final moment she had the feeling that another giant’s invisible hand plucked
them out of the air, before they impacted on the glowing grid lines of the
field. It swept them aside, into one of the stolid warehouse buildings that
peri metered the landing area, and at last set them down.
The crowd
of passengers left the warm-colored interior of the passenger terminal. Moon felt
her feet tingle as she walked at the pressure of an alien world ... or else
they tingled with bad circulation. The artificial gravity of the space city was
less than she was used to, and this was more; her feet came down like ballast
no matter how carefully she moved.
It was
barely dawn here on the planet surface, the air was still cool; Elsevier rubbed
her arms inside her sleeves. Moon slipped on her own wine-red robe and belted
it without protest. The Kharemoughis were a modest people, and Elsevier had
warned her that the free ways of the Thieves’ Market did not extend down to the
ground.
starless ... Looking up, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the
sky. Overhead the darkness was curtained with light, banner folds of green rose
yellow gold icy blue; sighing bands of rainbow, rays of scintillating whiteness
crowning an enchanted dreamland.
“Look at
that, Silky.” Elsevier lapsed into Sandhi as her gaze followed Moon’s up; the
words were not praise. “It’s disgraceful.”
“You can
say that again, citizen.” Three fellow shuttle passengers, dark, slender native
Kharemoughis, stood beside them waiting for a taxi; one of them nodded his
helmeted head in disgust. “Pollution-you’d think there no tomorrow was. Ye
gods, the sheer tonnage of cast-off junk floating up there. I don’t know how
they expect us our job to do. It’s not traffic control any more, it’s a
demolition derby.”
“SN—” The
second of the three was a woman; she laughed lightly, tapped him not quite
playfully on his uniformed shoulder. “These citizens aren’t from around here,”
a significant lifting of the eyebrows. “They don’t need by our petty complaints
to be bored, do they?”
“Yes, old
man.” The third helmet bobbed. “You really do need this vacation. You’re like a
bio purist sounding.”
The first
man pushed his hands into his belt, looking annoyed.
“What’s
wrong with the sky?” Moon pulled her gaze down, reluctantly. “It’s full of
light.”
The way it should be.
“It’s
beautiful.”
The first
man glanced at her with a frown starting, ended up smiling in spite of himself.
He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. “Ignorance is bliss, citizen.
Be glad you’re not a Kharemoughi.” A hovercraft slowed in front of them, and
they climbed in.
“Welcome to
Kharemough,” Cress said pointedly in Tiamatan, “where the gods speak Sandhi.”
He grinned at her.
Elsevier
claimed the next taxi; the Kharemoughi Nontech at the controls gave them a
group stare of mild astonishment when she asked for the estate of KR Aspundh.
She held up a graceful hand, showing him the ruby signet she wore on her thumb.
He turned back to the controls without comment and began a long arc around the
perimeter of the field.
“What’s
wrong with the sky, anyway?” Moon peered out through the taxi dome; the sky was
brightening, the aurora faded before the light of day.
“Industrial
pollution,” Elsevier said quietly. ‘“Are we forever doomed to repeat the errors
of our ancestors? Is history hereditary, or environmental?”“
“Nicely
put,” Cress said, glancing back from his seat beside the pilot.
“TJ’s
words.” Elsevier brushed the compliment aside like a gnat. “Kharemough was
fairly well-off even after the Old Empire fell apart, Moon. They still had some
industrial base—though hardship was great here, like everywhere, after they
were cut off from the interstellar trade that had supported them. They learned
to do things for themselves, but in ways that were cruder and infinitely more
wasteful. They suffered the consequences of pollution and overpopulation; they
almost destroyed their world over a millennium ago, before they got clean
hydrogen fusion and moved most of their industry into space. But now they’ve
exchanged their old problems for new ones—not such serious ones, at present,
but who knows what they’ll mean to future generations? Cause and effect;
there’s no escape from them.”
Moon
touched the tattoo hidden under the enameled sunburst collar, looked past Silky
at the sea of green foliage beneath them. She leaned away from him as she
looked down; knowing he was afraid of her touch, and still secretly repelled by
his glistening alien ness They had drifted up and across the narrow band of
city—mostly, from what she could see, warehouses and shops of every imaginable
kind, not yet stirring to the day; but not many apartments or houses. Now they
were rising over open woodland, broken by small park like clearings holding
private homes. “I thought you said there were still too many people here,
Elsie. They aren’t even as crowded as islanders.”
“There are,
my dear—but with so many of them and so much of their manufacturing out in
space, the surface dwellers have all the room they want, and can afford. They
gather around hubs like the one we just left, that distribute everything they
need. The wealthier you are, the farther out you live. KR lives quite a way
out.”
“Is he
rich, then?”
“Rich?”
Elsevier chuckled. “Oh, filthy rich .... It all should have been TJ’s, he was
the oldest; but he was censured and stripped of his rank for his scandalous
behavior. I’m sure he did it on purpose, he loathed the whole caste system. But
not KR; he was always a supporter of the status quo. He and TJ didn’t even
speak.”
“Then why
would he want to see us?” Moon moved uneasily.
“He’ll see
us, have no fear.” The enigmatic smile touched her face again. “Don’t let me
make you think badly of him; he’s a very good man, he simply lives by a
different set of values.”
“All
Kharemoughis are intolerant,” Cress said. “Only they’re intolerant about
different things.”
“KR came to
TJ’s funeral; and he told me that he knew he owed everything he had, and was,
to TJ, who had given it all up. He said that if I ever needed anything, I had
only to ask.”
“How did TJ
die?” hesitantly.
“It was his
heart. Passing through the Black Gates puts a strain on the human body, on the
heart. And disappointment puts a strain on the heart.” She glanced away, out
and down, at the greens and the dusky reds of the rolling forest land. Immense
knobs of gray rock pushed up through the trees now, like thick, stubby fingers;
houses clung precariously to the tips and sides. “It was very sudden. I hope
that I, too, may be taken by surprise.”
They were
dropping down again now, into the grounds of a large estate; skimming above
paintings laid out on the land in beds of glorious blooms, shrubs trained to
mimic strange creatures, fragile summerhouses wrapped in mazes of hedge. The
pilot set them down on the flagstoned landing terrace before the main house, a
structure the size of a meeting hall, but all curves and hummocks and gentle
slopes covered with vines, imitating the land itself. There were many windows,
many of them filled with colored glass, repeating the forms and hues of the art
gardens. Gaping at the house, Moon saw the great frescoed doors begin to open.
“You want
me to wait, citizens?” The pilot hung an arm across the edge of his seat back,
looking skeptical.
“That won’t
necessary be.” Elsevier passed him her credit card coolly; Moon climbed out
with the others.
“Looks like
just the spot for a day in the country.” Cress stretched his arms.
“Many.”
Silky turned slowly where he stood, looking back and down over the tiers of
gardens.
Elsevier
led them to the entrance. A dignified middle-aged woman with pale freckles and
a silver ring piercing one nostril stood waiting for them; she wore a simple
white robe wrapped by a wide sash, covered by strand on strand of heavy
turquoise jewelry. “Aunt Elsevier, what an unexpected surprise.” Moon was not
certain if the gracious smile that included them all went any deeper than her
skin.
“Hardly
unexpected,” Elsevier murmured. “One of the inventions that made my
father-in-law’s fortune was a system that screens callers electronically ...
Hello, ALV, dear,” in Sandhi. “How nice that our visits coincide. I’ve a friend
your father to see brought.”
She touched
Moon’s arm. “I hope he well is.” Moon noticed that she did not use the familiar
thy.
“Fine,
thank you; but at the moment the physicist Darjeengeshkrad is him consulting.”
She ushered them into the cool interior, closing the doors. Light from the
stained glass panels on either side fragmented Moon’s vision, softened her
sudden awareness of their group incongruity. “Let me you comfortable make until
he’s through.” She gestured them on down the hall; Moon noticed that her
fingernails were long, and had been filed into sculptures.
