The Snow Queen (44 page)

But now,
after another one hundred and fifty years of exploitation, the off worlders
were about to leave Tiamat again; the injustice he had tried to stop was almost
at an end ... and the time of regression and ignorance almost returned, another
half-revolution on an endless wheel of futility. At least Summer would give the
mers an inviolate space in time—time to replenish their numbers with painful
slowness, inevitably righting the hideous wrong their creators had done them.

But wrong
and right, time itself, meant nothing to the mers, formed no concept that Moon
could recognize in their scheme of things. Unmolested they lived for hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of years. A different set of parameters took precedence in
their brain: They lived for the moment, for the ephemeral beauty of a bubble
rising into the light and vanishing—for the act of creation, of becoming. There
was no need, and no purpose, to a lasting artifact; for the song, the dance,
the act, was in itself a work of art, like a flower or a life, made more
beautiful by its impermanence. The tangible, the material, were of no more use
or consequence to them than time itself. Their lives were endless by human standards,
and they lived them hedonistic ally absorbed in the sensuous caress of their
passage through the supple water, the flow of heat and cold, current and
surge—the stunning schism between water and air, the fluid heat of desire, the
soothing pressure of a clinging child.

There was
little she could have shared in words with them, if there had even been a
translator to cross the barrier of incomprehension. And yet here and now among
them, even enclosed in the insensate skin of her diver’s dry suit she could
feel the rigid mind-skin of her perceptions, values, goals, dissolving. She
could put aside the memories of what had just passed, and the uncertainty
ahead, letting now become forever and the future melt into foam. She saw the
mer who had been a mother to her circling her exuberantly; knew them all as
friends, family, lovers, felt herself become a part of their timeless world ...
Softly, tentatively at first, she began to blend her voice ll into the harmony
of the mer song.

She felt
Silky come up close behind her, felt his tentacles slide over her slick-suited
shoulders, circle the air hose of her oxygen pack, pull—”Silky!” The angry
protest garbled as she sank her teeth into the regulator, to keep him from
jerking it out of her mouth. She brought up her hands, felt more tentacles
twine around them as she tried to protect her air supply; pulled her
fin-awkward feet up to kick him away. And then she realized that two Silkys
struggled beside her; saw the sheathed knife come free from behind the false one’s
shoulder, swaying among tentacles like a fanged snake, caught between victims.
She kicked out, thrusting him away with her feet, but not before the blade
chose a victim and she saw the dark cloud of blood at Silky’s shoulder.

She caught
Silky in her arms, trying to swim them both out of reach of the killer; but the
quiet waters suddenly boiled with forms as the mers from the shore colony
poured into the sea, were herded together with the rest into a panic-stricken
mass. They thrashed around her, crowded her heavily, flipper, head, body,
banging and bruising. She clung grimly to Silky’s sluggish, grasping tentacles,
struggling upward through the chaos. But the brightening water above showed her
the silhouette of the heavy net settling toward them, the black stain of a
strange ship’s double hull breaking the surface of the bay. More figures that
should have been Silky but were not guided the net’s fall as it settled on her
like a shroud, dragging her back down in wild claustrophobia ...
The Hunt! No—it can’t be! Not here, not
here ...

But it was
useless to deny that the impossible had its fingers at her throat; that the
mers below her were maddened by the pain and disorientation of alien sonics ...
that they would all die. She let go of Silky, keeping close by him, saw him nod
and weave his tentacles through the netting as she bent double and pulled the
diver’s knife from the sheath on her leg. She began to slash with all her
strength at the strands of the net; it tore under the angry attack of her
blade, left her a space wide enough for them to slip through.

She swam
through the gap, drawing Silky after her, just as the net forced them down into
the maddened mers. But she clung to the opening, still slashing, ripping,
widening the gap. “Here! Here! Get out, get out, get out!” shouting into the
ululation of then: cries, half sobbing with furious rage. But the mers’ panic
was deaf to coherent thought, and the handful who tumbled through were only
driven out by the heaving turmoil beneath them. She searched them for her mer
mother, but did not find her. She went on slashing, cursing; gasping with the
effort of pulling in air. But the mers were drowning, helplessly drowning
themselves for their murderers, and she could not save them ...

Silky hung
at the net beside her, moving clumsily, stunned by his wound or by the sonics
that had dazzled the mers. Looking up at him, she saw two of the Hounds fall
out of the heights and bind him in tentacles, breaking his hold on the netting
as More tentacles wrapped her from behind, half blinding her, wrenched the
knife from her grasp as she tried to turn it on her attacker. Like flailing
snakes they covered her face mask, found her air hose again, tore the regulator
out of her mouth. Icy water squirted in through the mask’s seal, and panic gave
her the strength of two. But the Hound’s bonds of flesh gave her no leverage,
and it was only the strength of two women drowning ...

Not until
her head broke the surface, not until her bursting lungs opened at last to pull
in air and not the final, agonizing liquid breath, did she realize that they
had not held her under to drown; that they were not finished with her yet.

She
stumbled, incredulously, as her fins caught in bottom-weeds; she squeezed the
ocean’s fiery tears out of her eyes, saw the lapping water’s edge and the shore
rising ahead. Two Hounds propelled her out onto firm ground; half dragged, half
carried her up the stony beach of the mer rookery. There were no mers left on
it now, and the Hounds let her fall untended, to lie coughing and choking. She
heard another body drop beside her on the hard stones, saw Silky sprawled next
to her. She levered up on her elbows to reach him, tried to see his wound but
could not; squeezed his nearer shoulder with feeble encouragement.

She sat up,
every breath crawling down her raw throat into her congested lungs; pulled off
her fogging mask and felt the bitter wind stun her face. After a time more
figures emerged from the water down the beach, hauling an unwieldy harvest of
mer corpses into the shallows for the final processing. Moon ground her fists
into the beach cinders, whimpering softly, but not for herself.

Standing
nearer on the shore, watching them work, was a strange apparition in black,
with a man’s form and the spiny head of a totem creature. She saw him wave and
gesture, his toneless voice came to her half-inaudibly over the wind—a human
voice. The first mers were dragged up onto the shore; she watched a Hound kneel
by each, saw the knife flash, and the blood spill over the fur as soft as
sighs, into the collecting bucket. And then, its grace gone, its life stolen,
its joy and beauty torn away, the Hound left the body to rot on its ancestral
beach and make a feast for the carrion birds.

Moon’s eyes
swam, refusing to see more. Sickness rose in her, and a murderous hatred. Her
hand closed over a heavy cobble, tightening and tightening; she got to her
knees. Beside her Silky pulled himself up, climbed to his feet in one abrupt
motion, leaning on her shoulder. She heard him speak, not understanding the
words, but feeling the deeper wound he had taken to watch his brothers
slaughtering his friends. He went forward, staggering a little, before she
could follow. He started toward the inhuman being in black and the cluster of
Hounds around him.

“Silky—”
She struggled to her feet, kicking off her fins, cradling the stone as she
started after him.

The man in
black barely glanced their way. “Stop them.” He gestured indifferently, and three
of the Hounds left his side to block Silky’s advance, surrounding him without
hesitation. There was a burst of alien speech, and a muttering; and then she
saw them struggle. Tentacles whipped at heads and silvered eyes, she saw a
silvery knife bared again’ No Silky!” She ran forward. The third Hound broke
away and caught at her, fcrew her aside—as she saw the serrated blade sink ki
home. She screamed, as though she had taken the blow herself. Silky fell like a
stone among the stones. The man in black turned at her scream, but even as he
did she struck the third Hound with all her strength, clubbing him down. The
others grabbed her, held her struggling between them as the third staggered,
bleeding, to his feet and ripped off the hood of her suit, baring her throat.
Her hair spilled loose over her shoulders, tentacles tangled in it, jerking
back her head.

“Stop!”
Someone shouted the word. But she had no voice and no time at all, only a last
kaleidoscope of clouds and sky as the dripping blade bit her throatA shock of
violent motion hurled the Hounds away from her, knocked her to the ground. “Get
away from her! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The heavy boots of the
man in black straddled her, sheltering her like a tree in the face of a storm.
She looked up and up, seeing only his shadow silhouette against the desolate
stone-washed shore. “... Because she’s a sibyl, goddamn it, that’s why! What
are you trying to do, contaminate me? Get the hell away, and throw that knife
into the seal” He waved them off, stepped clear of her as they left, and
squatted down beside her.

Moon pushed
herself up warily, felt a thin warm necklace of blood trickle down over the
tattoo in the hollow of her throat, creep on into the neck of her suit and down
between her breasts.

The man in
black ... she was sure it was a man now, hidden behind a mask. His eyes were
all that she could see of him, and they were gray-green. He stretched an
uncertain glove toward her throat. She cringed back, startled, but he wiped the
blood from her tattoo with a sudden sweep of his hand. She saw him shudder at
the sign of the trefoil; he rubbed his gloved hand convulsively on the stones.
“Gods! Am I going crazy?” He looked away, searching the shore for a denial, an
affirmation. “You aren’t real. You can’t be! What are you?” His hand rose
again, caught her chin to hold her face in front of him; let it go, slipping
across her cheek, along her hair almost like a caress. “Not her ...” It was
almost a plea.

She lifted
her own gloved hand to her throat, where pain was spreading from ear to ear,
chin to breastbone; shielding her wound, shielding the trefoil from his gaze.
“Moon,” she whispered, not sure why she gave her name, but grateful that she
still had a voice left to speak it. “Sibyl—” her voice roughened, “yes, I am!
And I tell you that you’ve committed murder. You have no right to hunt these
lands. And no man has the right to murder an intelligent being!” She swept a
hand toward the carnage on the beach, not following it with her eyes. “It’s
murder, murder!”

His eyes
followed, came back as green and hard as emeralds. “Shut up, damn you—” But
they stayed on her face, incredulous, demanding, and his hands knotted on his
knees. “Damn you, damn you! What are you doing here? How could you come
here
, to see me like this? After you
left me—I could kill you for this!” He twisted his head, wrenching his eyes
away, throwing the words into the wind.

“Yes! Yes!
Kill me too, mer slayer, sibyl slayer, coward—and damn yourself!” She bared her
throat to him again, grimacing with the motion. “Spill my blood, and take its
curse on you!” She stretched out her bloody fingers, trying to reach him, wound
him, infect him But her hand lost its strength, fell from the air forgotten, as
she saw at last the symbol that gleamed on his black suit: the circle sign
crossed and recrossed, the sign of the Hegemony; the medal that she had seen
every day of her life in Summer ... Her hand rose again, and he did not stop
her from touching it. Slowly, slowly, she lifted her eyes, knowing that in
another moment she would’ No His fist came at her without warning and crushed
her into blackness.

“Hello,
Miroe.” Jerusha climbed out of the patrol craft wearing her uniform and her
best imitation smile. The wind clapped its chill hands on her shoulders, tried
to jerk her half-sealed coat open for ruder intimacies. Damn this weather! Her
smile struggled.

“Jerusha?”
Ngenet came striding down the slope from the outbuildings, summoned by field
hands who had seen her coming in.

His own
widening smile of welcome looked real to her, and hers began to warm. But she
read ambivalence in the glance that took in her uniform before it met her eyes.
“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes.” She
nodded, an excuse to look down, wondering if time was all that lay behind his
hesitation. “I know. How—how’ve you been, Miroe?”

“About the
same. Everything’s about the same.” He pushed his hands into his parka pockets,
shrugged. “It usually is. Is this official business, or strictly a social
call?” He peered past her into the empty patrol craft

“A little
of both, I guess,” trying to make it sound casual. She saw his mouth tighten
ever so slightly, twitching his mustache. “That is, we had a report on a tech
runner downed near here”—
fully two or
three weeks ago
—”and since I was in the area checking it out ...”