The Snow Queen (40 page)

He pulled
them on slowly, over senseless fingers iced with blood. The thought of being
stunned helpless, dragged to a sled and dumped aboard like a crate of spare
parts was unendurable. He must bear himself with all the dignity he could,
until he found a way out of this nightmare ... some way, any way.

Something
dropped over his helmet, slithered down his face like a snake to settle around
his neck. He looked up, startled, and the noose tightened against his throat.
The girl laughed at his expression; the other end of the rope wrapped her
mittened hand. She let it swing loose, standing arrogantly akimbo in front of
him. “Good boy. Ma says she wants your hands. But she says I get the rest of
you, for my zoo.” She pushed her goggles down, half hiding her narrow, knobby
face. “My pet Blue.” She laughed again, jerked suddenly on the rope. “Come on,
Blue! And you better come quick.”

Gundhalinu
climbed hastily to his feet, floundered after her through the snow to the
waiting skimmers. Knowing that even though they hadn’t killed him he was still
a dead man; because in that moment his world had come to an end.

Moon looked
past the back of Elsevier’s heavily padded seat, straining against the arm of
her own seat to see out of the LB’s shielded window. Tiamat lay in their view
like a rising moon, but infinitely more beautiful to her inner eye. Home—she
was coming home, and it was hard not to believe that time had turned itself
inside out: that she would find everything as it had been, even as it should have
been, when that circle of cloud-limned blue below her expanded and filled once
more with the endless sea. But even if it was not the world she had lost, she
knew now that she would find the way ... she would find the way to change it
back,

“Shields
green?”

“Ya.”

She
listened to Elsevier’s murmured queries, Silky’s monosyllabic responses, the
comforting rhythm of a ritual repeated countless times before. Their entry into
Tiamat’s atmosphere was neither as painful nor as terrifying as their leaving
of it; that outward journey seemed now as though it had happened to someone
else. She listened with only half her mind, the other half roaming from past to
future, sidestepping the uncertainty of their perilous present. Nothing could
go wrong now, nothing would. She had passed through the Black Gate; she was
meant to do this.

But
Elsevier had radioed an incredulous Ngenet before they broke orbit, only to
learn that he could no longer meet them at Shotover Bay; that he had lost his
hovercraft five years ago, after their last abortive landing. This time they
must take the greater risk of approaching his own plantation on the coast south
of Carbuncle; there was no one else to whom Elsevier would trust their final
landing.

Elsevier
had been—fading, it was the only word Moon could put to the subtle
metamorphosis she had witnessed since they had come through the Gate. She had
tried to learn what was wrong, but Elsevier had refused to answer; and without
any lessening of tenderness, withdrawn into herself and closed Moon out.

Moon was
hurt and puzzled, until the time when the Twins began to dominate the ship’s
viewscreens. And then she saw at last that this was what Elsevier had been
looking toward, preparing for: The end that would come with Moon’s fresh
beginning. The final parting from the life she had known, the final parting
from the ship that held half a lifetime’s bittersweet memories. The final
parting from the surrogate daughter who could have given her a new life to
replace the one she was leaving behind, but who instead had only given her a
deeper loss to endure.

A vast
pseudo-sea of boundless cloud was blanketing their view of the sea now, as they
dropped lower and lower, plummeting through the sapphire upper air. Soon ...
soon they would break the cloud surface, soon she would see their destination,
the long unbroken line of the western continental coast where Ngenet’s
plantation lay—and Carbuncle.

“... Ratio
is up one and a—Silky! We’re in the spotlight! Shift power to rear shields,
there’s lightning com—”

A blaze of
blue-white light put out the sky ahead, sent daggers into Moon’s eyes; the
metal pod shuddered around herA jarring her teeth. No, no; it can’t be!

“Oh, gods!”
Elsevier cried out, in something that was closer to anger than despair.
“They’ve tracked us down! We’re locked in, we’ll never get—”

Another
explosion burst around them ... a stretch of silence followed. It was broken as
the radio abruptly came to life on its own. “... Surrender now or be destroyed.
We have you in our beam. You will not escape.”

“Losing—”
The third explosion tore away the name of what had been lost, and Moon’s own
questioning cry. The fourth gave them no more time; the instrument panel
sparked and shrilled abuse, overloading their dazzled senses. f

“Cutting
power!” She heard Elsevier’s voice break; the words barely penetrated her
ringing ears. “... only hope ... think we’re j already dead—” The cabin went
black with the suddenness of death, :] but Moon’s blinking eyes recaptured the
light of the outer air; saw the limitless blue, white, and golden fantasy
fields of heaven obliterate as they broke into the surface of the clouds. She
clung to the edge of her seat, counting every beat of her heart; realizing with
each reaffirmation of her own life that there had not been another explosion
yet—the one that, utterly defenseless now, they would never even see.

They fell
out of the clouds again, as abruptly as they had fallen into them. She saw the
sea at last, rolling beneath them, an ocean of molten pewter. Raindrops
spattered and blurred across the wide window, smearing the view of sea and sky
like tears. And they were still alive. The LB dropped through a flattening arc,
like a sling stone skimming an infinite pond. Elsevier and Silky worked in
silence at the controls. Moon kept silence with them, her voice cowering in her
throat, making the only contribution she could.

“Now,
Silky; emergency systems on—”

The
smoke-gray cone above Moon’s seat dropped unexpectedly over her, cutting off
Elsevier’s voice beginning a distress call, and her last view of the rising sea
surface, ice-white and iron-gray. She was immobilized against her seat by a
cushion of expanding air, lay unresisting—unable to resist—as her helplessness
became total. After an eternity of anticipation, the coming together of metal
sphere and iron-gray sea rang dimly through her, like a blow falling on someone
else, in astounding anticlimax.

And after
another brief eternity the cushion shrivelled away from her, the smoky pod
lifted. She threw off the restraining straps and pulled herself forward out of
her seat to stand between the pilots’ couches. The gray shield was still rising
above Silky’s seat; he shook his head in a very human gesture of befuddlement.
Before her the sea butted against the port with furious indignation; droplets
of icy water seeped through the shatter-frost that impact had etched over the
reinforced transparent wall. The very structure of the LB heaved under her
feet, and the crash of the angry water was loud around them.

The hood
hung firmly in place above Elsevier’s seat; as though it had never-Moon looked
down suddenly at Elsevier’s face, afraid to see, unable to look away.

A track of
red traced the ebony of Elsevier’s upper lip, but she looked up, resting her
head against the seat back. “It’s nothing, my dear ... only a nosebleed ... I
had to finish my message. Ngenet’s coming.” She shut her eyes, gasping
shallowly, as though gravity’s heavy hand still crushed her ... had already
crushed her. She sat motionless, making no effort even to raise a finger; like a
woman who had all the time in the world.

Moon
swallowed, choking on a smile, touched her shoulder with frightened tenderness.
“We’re down, Elsie. You saved us. Everything’s all right now! It’s over.”

“Yes.” A
strange surprise filled the violet-blue eyes; Elsevier looked out in
astonishment at something beyond their view. “I’m so cold.” A spasm worked the
muscles of her face.

And as
suddenly the eyes were empty.

“Elsie.
Elsie?” Moon’s hand tightened over her shoulder, shook her ... released her,
when there was no response. “Silky—” half turning, not willing to turn away,
“she’s not ... Elsie!” pleading.

Silky
shouldered her aside in the cramped space between the seats. He reached out
with the cold snake-fingers of his gray-green arm to touch the warm flesh of
Elsevier’s face, her throat ... But she did not flinch under his touch, only
went on gazing at something beyond view, until the flat strips of gray passed
over her eyes, closing them forever. “Dead.”

The LB
heaved and settled, throwing them off-balance; Moon looked down distraughtly as
her feet did not respond. Water lapped the legs of her pressure suit, sea
water, rolling into the cabin. “Dead?” She shook her head. “No, she’s not. She
isn’t dead. Elsie.

Elsie,
we’re flooding! Wake up!” shaking the limp, un responding body. Tentacles
wrapped her arms, jerked her away unceremoniously.

“Dead!”
Silky’s eyes were the clearest, the deepest she had ever seen them. He pressed
a sequence of buttons on the panel, repeated it. “Hatch sprung. Sink. Out, go—”
He shoved her toward the lock; she staggered as a new, knee-deep surge met her
halfway in the aisle.

“No! She
isn’t dead. She can’t be!” furiously. “We can’t leave her now.” Moon clung to a
seat back.

“Go!” Silky
struck at her, driving her away, back toward the lock. She stumbled and fell,
another surge covered her and brought her up gasping with salt fire burning her
eyes. She struggled on to the lock entrance, caught hold of the doorway,
turning to look back once more: to see Silky kneel in the swirling water by
Elsevier’s side and bow his head, rest it briefly against her shoulder in
tribute and farewell.

He climbed
to his feet again, waded down the aisle to Moon’s side. “Out!” The tentacles
wrapped her arm again as he dragged her on into the lock.

She let go
of the door frame, unable to resist, and plunged after him. She saw the
hatchway agape, swallowing the sea, like a helpless dr owner .. “My helmet!
I’ll drown—” She turned back to the inner cabin, but the waist-deep surge
wrapped its own arms around her, dragged her off her feet. Icy water doused her
again; she struggled upright, half swimming, gasping as the frigid runoff
sluiced in around the neck of her suit. The LB tilted with the heaving of the
sea swells, canted the floodwaters back toward the hatch, sweeping her with
them. She slammed into the edge of the hatch opening, cracking her head on the
metal, before the LB spewed them both out into the open ocean.

Moon’s cry
extinguished like a flame as the sea closed over her head. She kicked her way
to the surface, broke out into the air, where wind-driven sleeting rain beat
her back against the water surface. Fingers of blinding hot and cold mauled her
inside her clumsy suit. “Silky!” She screamed his name, and it was torn away by
the wind, as lost and desolate as a mer’s cry.

But then as
suddenly, Silky’s spume-splashed face and torso were beside her; supporting her
as she fought to keep herself afloat, dragged down by the waterlogged pressure
suit. He had shed his own suit, swimming freely, in his element. She felt him
jerk at the seals of her suit front, trying to strip it from her.

“No!” She
clawed at his slippery tentacles, but they escaped her like eels. “No, I’ll
freeze!” Her struggles drove her under, she came up again gagging and spitting.
“I can’t live in this—without it!” knowing that she would not survive anyway,
because the suit was filling with liquid ballast to drag her down. She
understood at last, in the way that would only come to anyone once in a
lifetime, the full and poignant irony of the Sailor’s Choice: to freeze, or to
drown.

Silky left
her suit alone, only trying now to help her stay afloat. Already the first
shocking agony of cold had blurred to a bone-deep ache that sapped her of
strength and judgment. In the distance between the shifting molten mountains,
for a moment she glimpsed the foundering LB—and then nothing where it had been
but the flowing together of sea and sky. Elsevier. A sacrifice to the Sea ...
Moon felt the salt water of her own grief mingle with the sea’s and the sky’s.

And after
an uncertain length of time she realized that the squall was passing: The sky
dried its tears and lost its anger, the swollen wrath left the sea’s face,
exhaustion dried her own tears as a wan, ice-splintered sun blinked down at her
through the opening clouds. Silky still held her firmly from behind, helping
her stay afloat; her body was convulsed with uncontrollable shivering.
Sometimes she thought she could see the shoreline, unreachably far away, never
sure it was more than a phantom of the mists or of her mind. She had no
strength left to speak, and Silky spoke only with the wordless reassurance of
his presence. She felt his alien ness more vividly than she ever had, and the
knowledge that it made no difference ...

She should
tell him to let her go, save his strength, there was no hope that Ngenet would
ever find them in time. It would still come to the same thing in the end. But
she couldn’t form the words, and knew in her heart that she didn’t want to. To
die alone ... to die to sleep here forever. She thought she could feel the
marrow congealing in her bones. She was so tired, so achingly weary; and sleep
would come, rocked in the Sea Mother’s inexorable cradle. The Lady was both
creator and destroyer, and with dim despair she knew that the single lives of
woman or man were no more important in Her greater pattern than the life of the
tiniest crustacean creeping through the bottom mud ...