The Snow Queen

45

Tor sat in the corner, propped against the wall like a spineless rag doll; the laboratory’s white, formless light drove spears into her watering eyes. Beyond the wall behind her back she knew there was a whole city full of people oblivious to her folly or her doom-oblivious to their own doom. But no sound of the celebration reached into this sterile room, no laughter, no music, no shouting. The wall was sound sealed, and no sound of hers would ever escape it, if she had even had the power to make one. She struggled futilely, silently, against the invisible bondage of her paralysis. It would be nearly an hour before her voluntary nervous system would have the control to move even a finger again; and she was sure there wasn’t that much time left in the rest of her life. Oh, gods, if I could only scream! The scream echoed inside her head until she thought her eyes would explode… and she whimpered, a thin, miserable thread of sound, the most beautiful noise she had ever made.

Oyarzabal glanced over at her from the table, where he sat in the hot glare of disfavor’s spotlight. His broad face with its leonine brush of side-whiskers showed discomfort approaching her own; he looked away again hastily. The casually surreal debate about the most effective means of starting an epidemic here in the city droned on, the buzzing of a ghoulish hive. One of the others had gone to talk to the Source. Oyarzabal, you lousy bastard, do something, do something!

Oyarzabal suggested that they pollute the water supply. It was rejected as ineffective.

Hanood, who had gone to the Source half an eternity ago, came back into the room, relocking the door behind him with exaggerated care.

The insect drone fell silent. Tor watched heads turn to the judge’s verdict, not even able to roll her own eyes. “Well?” One of the men she didn’t know asked it.

“He says get rid of her, naturally.” Hanood bent his head in her direction. “Dump her body into the sea; nobody’ll be able to figure out where she disappeared to in all this.” He waved a hand toward the unreachable reality beyond the wall. “They say, ‘The Sea never forgets’… but Carbuncle will.”

Tor moaned, but the sound stayed trapped inside her.

“No, damn it, I don’t believe it!” Oyarzabal stood up to a confrontation. “I’m going to marry her; I’m going to take her away. He knows that, he wouldn’t say to get rid of her!”

“Are you questioning my orders, Oyarzabal?” The Source’s hoarse, disembodied voice descended on him from the air; all of them looked up involuntarily.

Oyarzabal hunched under the weight of it, but his resolution held. “You don’t need to kill Persipone. I can’t just stand here and let that happen.” His eyes searched the walls, the corners of the ceiling, uncertainly. “There’s got to be some other way.”

“Are you suggesting I should have them kill you, too? Your incompetence caused this situation, after all. Didn’t it?”

Oyarzabal’s hand slid toward his gun under the tail of his long leather vest. But it was five to one against him, and Oyarzabal never took suicidal odds. “No, master! No — But… but she’s going to be my wife. I’ll make sure she’s not going to talk.”

“You think now that Persipone knows what you’re doing here she’ll still want to marry you?” The voice turned colder. “Amoral animal that she is, she still hates you for this. You’ll never be able to trust her.”

Oh gods, oh Source, just let me talk! I’ll promise him anything! Sweat trickled maddeningly down her ribs.

“And I’ll never be able to trust you again, Oyarzabal, unless you prove your loyalty is still to me.” The voice paused, seemed to smile; Tor shuddered inside. “But I’m not totally unsympathetic to your position. So I’ll give you two choices: Either Persipone dies, or she lives. But if she lives you’ll have to take measures to make sure she can never testify against us.”

Oyarzabal’s sudden hope went behind clouds. “What do you mean?” He dared to glance at her, looked away again.

“I mean I want her unable to tell what she knows to anybody, no matter what they do to her. I think an injection of xetydiel would be effective enough.”

“The hell! You mean turn her into a zombie?” Oyarzabal swore. “She won’t have any brain left!”

One of the others laughed. “What’s wrong with that: mindless and yours. Since when did a woman need a brain, anyhow?”

Oh, Lady, help me… help me, help me! Tor called on the faith of her ancestors, abandoned by the thousand uncaring gods of the betraying off worlders I’d rather die. I’d rather die.

“You see the trouble women cause when they take too much freedom on themselves, Oyarzabal — see the trouble this stupid female’s curiosity has brought on you. And think of the trouble her Queen is about to cause her own world.” The Source’s voice was a rasp wearing down metal. “Then make your choice: dead or brain wiped And choose for yourself, when you choose for her.”

Oyarzabal’s hands clenched and opened at his sides as he swept the room and the five other faces, seeing what was obvious. “All want her killed. I don’t want to watch her killed, want her alive.”

Tor whimpered again, felt a dribble of saliva ooze out at the corner of her mouth. A tremor ran up her legs out of her toes Move, move! but no further.

“Then I can take care of the lady’s needs.” The spokesman for the group of technicians a man she had finally recognized as C’sunh, a biochemist, an expert on drugs stood up from the table and moved to one of the sealed cabinets beyond her cone of sight. She listened to him sorting bottles and utensils, listened to the hissing cloud inside her head begin to drown out every other sound.

Oyarzabal shifted from foot to foot, his head down, as though he hadn’t expected things to happen so suddenly, so irrevocably. Tor murdered him with her eyes.

“Shall I go ahead and inject her, master?” The biochemist came back into her line of sight, holding a syringe.

“Yes, take care of it, C’sunh,” the voice said softly. “You see, Persipone, you never win. It always turns out the same.”

Tor watched C’sunh come toward her, watched everything within her sight turn golden; the static in her head deafened her. Oyarzabal watched him, too; watched her, his hands at his sides, his eyes glazing.

A heavy pounding sounded through the sealed door. The chemist froze in midstep as a muffled voice shouted, “Open up! Police!” The men at the table leaped to their feet, looking at each other and up into the air in disbelief.

“Blues!”

“Master, there’s Blues in the casino! What’ll we do?”

But no answer came, and sensation too excruciatingly high to register as sound drilled into Tor’s brain. The men covered their ears with their hands. “They’re cancelling the seals! Do something, for gods’ sakes! Finish her, C’sunh!”

The chemist came toward her again, his face contorted with pain, the thin plastic cylinder still in his hand. Oyarzabal went after him abruptly, grabbed his arm. But then the others were on Oyarzabal, and sunh was bending over her. ,

“No!” Tor gasped the word, her last uji

The door burst open and her vision filled with fluid blue: the room filling with half a dozen uniformed police. “Hold it!” Weapons trained everywhere; two or three found C’sunh’s back and face. He straightened slowly away from her. “Drop it.” The Blue stared him down. He let the syringe fall; she cringed as it landed centimeters from her unprotected leg.

“Doctor C’sunh, as I live and breathe!” Tor saw the Commander of Police herself materialize out of the amorphous wall of blue tunics. “You’ve been in our files for as long as I can remember — it’s a real pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh.” She grinned with the pleasure of it, and clamped binders on him. Her men were doing the same for Oyarzabal and the rest. She leaned over, searching Tor’s face, glancing aside at the fallen syringe. She smiled again. “Well, Tor Starhiker. You look like you’ve got something you just can’t wait to tell us. And I can’t wait to hear it. Hey, Woldantuz! Get over here and give this woman a shot. The right kind.” She winked reassurance as one of the patrolmen appeared at her side and kneeled down.

Tor barely registered the burn of the antidote as the Commander’s space was filled by an even more unexpected face. “Pollux!” The word didn’t quite form, but control was coming back to her; she felt it climb through the levels in her mind like a drug rush.

“Tor. Are you all right?”

“What… what… did you… say?” She gulped and gasped.

“Tor. Are you all right?” he repeated, as tonelessly as before. He bent forward, offering her his arm as she tried to get her feet under her. She took the arm gratefully, hauling herself up.

“Whoo.” She put a hand to her head, dizzy with relief, leaning heavily against him. Her fingers sank into the soft frizz of her skewed wig; she pushed at it absently… hearing again the last words the Source had spoken to her. She closed her hand, jerked the wig off her head and threw it down. “Since when have you had a vocabulary, you can of bolts?” She leaned back, staring into Pollux’s inscrutable non face felt a grin of triumph spread across her own. “Hellfire… I was right about you. You old fraud! Why didn’t you ever talk to me before, damn it?”

“Just a little joke, Tor.” Deadpan.

“Hah. That’s the kind of laughs you’d expect from a machine. How long’ve you been able to talk like that?”

“Since I was programmed at the police academy on Kharemough.”

“The what?”

“Cancel that, Pollux.” The Commander reappeared on his other side, frowning. “You really do need work… You can thank Pollux for your timely rescue, Starhiker. And I think I can thank him for a lot more — if you’ll tell me I’m right in what I figure was going on here.” She pointed a thumb at the lab and the captives behind her.

“Thanks, Pollux.” Tor burnished his chest softly with her hand. “They were going to start a plague,” she felt her legs weave under her again, “and kill all the Summers with it.”

PalaThion nodded as if it was what shed expected to hear. “Who put them up to it?”

Tor looked down.

“The Snow Queen?”

Startled, she nodded, feeling inexplicable shame at admitting it to an off worlder “That’s what they said.”

“That’s what I thought.” PalaThion smiled coldbloodedly no longer seeing her. “I’ve beaten her at last! Unless…” She shook her head, glancing away as another Blue entered the room, an inspector this time. “Mantagnes?” she said eagerly.

But the inspector shook his head grimly. “We missed him, Commander.”

“Jaakola? How the hell could you possibly—”

“I don’t know!” He met her anger with his own. “When we broke into his office, he was gone. We searched everywhere — a fly couldn’t have hidden in there! They’re still searching… but he had a way out, and we haven’t traced it yet.”

“He won’t get off-planet.” PalaThion pulled at the empire sign on her belt buckle. “We’ll get him.”

“Don’t bet on it.” Mantagnes studied his feet, disgusted.

“Then let him try finding a hiding place from charges of attempted genocide.” She waved a hand. “Woldantuz, let’s put these other beautiful people in the bottle where they belong. At least we’ve got all the evidence. And a witness. Starhiker, I’ll need your testimony.”

“Count on it, Blue.” Tor nodded, feeling her urge for revenge blaze up as C’sunh was led past her. Two of the others followed him before she saw Oyarzabal.

“Persipone?” He pulled his guard to a stop. “I guess I won’t be takin’ you with me after all. Not where I’m bound now.”

“You wanted to make me into a vegetable, you lousy bastard! That’s all you ever wanted!” She pushed past PalaThion to stand in front of him. “I hope you stay there until you rot. I hope you never even see another woman—” She remembered suddenly that he had tried to stop it at the last; and that the few seconds he had won her had made all the difference.

“I didn’t want you dead, that’s all! Even havin’ you like that was better than havin’ you dead.” He leaned toward her; the Blue held him back.

“Speak for yourself.” She folded her arms. “Since you’re the only one you seem to think about.”

He looked away, at PalaThion. “If you want what I know about this, just ask. I’ll tell you anything.” PalaThion nodded, and one of the other men swore under his breath. Tor realized that Oyarzabal’s life wouldn’t be worth a drunkard’s damn from now on, no matter where they sent him.

And there would be no getting off this world for her now, no matter what she did. Oh, gods, why can’t I ever do anything right? She hugged herself tightly, because there was no one else left to hold her, or to hold. She felt PalaThion look at her, found an unexpected sympathy in the woman’s eyes. PalaThion’s head moved imperceptibly, until she was looking at Oyarzabal, and past him.

Tor stepped forward, still holding onto herself, protecting herself, as she closed with Oyarzabal. She kissed him briefly on the mouth. She stepped back again, and they wouldn’t let him follow. “So long, Oyar.”

He didn’t answer her. The Blues led him out of the room. Tor moved back to stand beside Pollux. Why is it? Why is it? That you never want what you’ve got till you’ve thrown it away?