Joan Vinge - Snow Queen
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- Book:Snow Queen
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- Publisher:Bantam Doubleday Dell
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- Year:1984
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Snow Queen: summary, description and annotation
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The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. All is not lost if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. Arienrhod is not without competition as Moon, a young Summer-tribe sibyl, and the nemesis of the Snow Queen, battles to break a conspiracy that spans space.
Joan Vinge: author's other books
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Snow Queen — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
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Joan D. Vinge
Snow Queen Book 1 - The Snow Queen
Snow Queen Book 1 - The Snow Queen
0-7088-8075-4 / 1980
Joan D. Vinge received a degree in anthropology from San Diego State University in 1971 and considers herself an anthropologist of the future. She worked briefly as a salvage archaeologist before turning to writing. Her novella Eyes of Amber won the Hugo Award in 1978, and her stories Fireship and View from a Height were Hugo nominees in 1979. Ms. Vinge lives in Brooklyn, New York.
To the Lady, who gives, and who takes away.
I would like to gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and artistry of Hans Christian Andersen, whose folk tale The Snow Queen gave me the seeds of this story; and Robert Graves, whose book The White Goddess provided me with the rich Earth in which it grew. And I would like to thank those people who helped me weed, and tend, and harvest the fruits of my labor: my husband Vernor, and my editors Don Bensen and Jim Frenkel, without whose perceptive and sensitive suggestions this book would not have grown as strong or as truly. I would also like to thank my father, for his love of science fiction; and my mother, for teaching me a womans strength and giving me the freedom to become.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The following names of characters and places are pronounced as shown:
Tiamat (TEE-uh-maht)
Arienrhod (AIRY-en-rode)
Geia Jerusha PaleThion (GAI-uh-jer-OO-shuh PAL-ub-THY-on)
Gundhalinu (Gun-dah-LEE-noo)
Kharemough (KARE-uh-moff)
Kharemoughi (KARE-uh-MAWG-ee)
Danaquil Lu (DAN-uh-keel LOO)
Ngenet Miroe (eng-EN-it MIR-row)
Persipon (Per-SIP-oh-nay)
Elsevier (EL-seh-veer)
LiouxSked (LOO-sked)
Sandhi (SAHN-dee)
Mantagnes (MAN-TAG-nees)
(Oy-ARE-zuh-ball)
TierParde (TEER-par-DEE)
Taryd Roh (TARE-id ROW)
strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
- Matthew 7:14
You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Prologue -
The door swung shut silently behind them, cutting off the light, music, and wild celebration of the ballroom. The sudden loss of sight and hearing made him claustrophobic. He tightened his hands over the instrument kit he carried beneath his cloak.
He heard her amused laughter in the darkness at his side, and light burst around him again, opening up the small room they stood in now. They were not alone. His tension made him start, even though he was expecting it, even though it had happened to him five times already in this interminable night, and would happen several times more. It was happening in a sitting room this time on the boneless couch that obtruded into a forest of dark furniture legs dusted with gold. The irrelevant thought struck him that he had seen a greater range of styles and taste in this one night than he had probably seen in forty years back on Kharemough.
But he was not back on Kharemough; he was in Carbuncle, and this Festival night was the strangest night he would ever spend, if he lived to be a hundred. Sprawled on the couch in unselfconscious abandon were a man and a woman, both of them deeply asleep now from the drugged wine in the half-empty bottle lying on its side on the rug. He stared at the purple stain that crept across the sculptured carpet-pile, trying not to intrude any more than he must on their privacy. Youre certain that this couple has also been intimate?
Quite certain. Absolutely certain. His companion lifted the white-feathered mask from her shoulders, revealing a mass of hair almost as white coiled like a nest of serpents above her eager, young girls face. The mask was a grotesque contrast to the sweetness of that face: the barbed ripping beak of a predatory bird, the enormous black-pupiled eyes of a night hunter that glared at him with the promise of life and death hanging in the balance No. When he looked into her eyes, there was no contrast. There was no difference. You Kharemoughis are so self-righteous. She threw off her white feathered cape. And such hypocrites. She laughed again; her laughter was both bright and dark.
He removed his own less elaborate mask reluctantly: an absurd fantasy creature, half fish, half pure imagination. He did not like having to expose his expression.
She searched his face in the pitiless lamplight, with feigned innocence. Dont tell me, Doctor, that you really dont like to watch?
He swallowed his indignation with difficulty. Im a biochemist, Your Majesty, not a voyeur.
Nonsense. The smile that was far too old for the face formed on her mouth. All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become doctors? Except for the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the blood and the pain.
Afraid to respond, he only moved past her, crossed the carpet to the couch and put his instrument kit on the floor. Beyond these walls the city of Carbuncle climaxed its celebration of the Prime Ministers cyclical visit to this world with a night of joyous abandon. He had never expected to find himself spending it with this worlds queen and certainly not spending it doing what he was about to do.
The sleeping woman lay with her face toward him. He saw that she was young, of medium height, strong and healthy. Her gently smiling face was deeply tanned by sun and weather beneath the tangled, sandy hair. The rest of her body was pale; he supposed she kept it well protected from the bitter cold beyond the citys walls. The man beside her was a youthful thirty, he judged, with dark hair and light skin, and could have been either a local or an off worlder, but he was of no concern now. Their Festival masks looked down in hollow-eyed censure, like impotent guardian gods resting on the couch back. He dabbed the womans shoulder with antiseptic, made the tiny incision to insert the tracer beneath her skin, doing the simple procedure first to reassure himself. The Queen stood watching intently, silent now that he needed silence.
Noise concentrated beyond the locked door; he heard slightly slurred voices protesting loudly. He shrank like an animal in a trap, waiting for discovery.
Dont worry, Doctor. The Queen laid a light, reassuring hand on his arm. My people will see that were not disturbed.
Why the hell did I let myself be talked into this? more to himself than to her. He turned back to his work, but his hands were unsteady.
Twenty-five extra years of youth can be very persuasive.
A lot of good itll do me if I spend them all in some penal colony!
Get hold of yourself, Doctor. If you dont finish what youve started tonight, you wont have earned your twenty-five years anyway. The agreement stands only while I have at least one perfectly normal clone-child somewhere among the Summer folk on this planet.
Im aware of the terms. He finished with the small incision and sealed it. But I hope you understand that a clone implant under these circumstances is not only illegal, its highly unpredictable. This is a difficult procedure. The odds of producing a clone who is even a reasonable replica of the original person are not particularly good under the most controlled conditions, let alone
Then the more implants you perform tonight, the better off well both be. Isnt that right?
Yes, Your Majesty, tasting self-disgust. I suppose it is. He rolled the sleeping woman carefully onto her back and reached into his kit again.
- 1 -
Here on Tiamat, where there is more water than land, the sharp edge between ocean and sky is blurred; the two merge into one. Water is drawn up from the shining plate of the sea and showers down again in petulant squalls. Clouds pass like emotion across the fiery red faces of the Twins, and are shaken off, splintering into rainbows: dozens of rainbows every day, until the people cease to be amazed by them. Until no one stops to wonder, no one looks up
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