World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  I began to tremble as I watched him go. The emotion was so strong I could taste it, like vomit. I wanted to . . . Gods, what’s wrong with me—letting a degenerate like that drag me down to his level?

  Ang must be blind.

  DAY 33.

  Something happened today, and I don’t know what I to make of it . . . except that I want to make it mean something. This morning I heard Spadrin’s voice at the edge of the scrapyard. I looked out of the rover’s cab, afraid that he was coming to harass me again. But he was talking with someone else—I saw two figures swim in the heated air. The other person was a woman. I watched him push her away suddenly, so hard that she fell. He disappeared into the yellow-green jungle.

  I crossed the field of rusting metal and fleshy weeds to help the woman up. As I saw her face I realized I’d seen her before Last night she came to the door of Ang’s place in the Quarter, while we were going over supply lists. Ang had sent her away angrily, and without bothering to explain anything to us.

  “I’m all right . . . thank you,” she said, obviously shaken. She wasn’t what I expected at all—a small, neat woman in the usual loose white Company coveralls. Her face was bare, and her dark, graying hair was cut short. She was not young, though she was probably younger than she looked. There was an atypical air of gentility and dignity about her. I knew what she wasn’t, but I couldn’t guess what she was. She met my stare with her own, and said, “You’re very kind.” The words were like a judgment, or a benediction. “My name is Hahn—Tiras ranKells Hahn,” last name first, after the local custom. “May I speak with you?” She sounded as if she didn’t expect me to say yes.

  But I said, “Call me Gedda,” and I offered her my arm. She seemed grateful for the support as I led her back to the rover’s shade. She sipped cold water from my canteen, buying time until she was ready to tell me what she wanted. I listened to the sounds of the day—the thrumming of a million heat-besotted tarkas, the jungle’s sentient whisper, the clanking and grinding of the Company’s refinery hidden behind high gray walls to our left. I uprooted a fat creeper that had spiralled up the rover’s side since yesterday—I’ve never known a place where flora grows with such preternatural speed. I threw it away and wiped my hands on my hopelessly stained pants. If I live to see the Millennium, I may never be clean of the feel of this place.

  “It’s frightening, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “How precariously we float on the surface of life.”

  I grunted, looking at the jungle. “A functional repeller grid would solve that problem. What did you want of Ang?”

  “His help. Someone’s help. . . . ” She rubbed her face. “My daughter Song . . . is missing. My only child.”

  “Have you reported—”

  “You don’t understand!” She shook her head. “She’s gone to Fire Lake.”

  I laughed. Then I said, “Forgive me,” at the sight of her face. “You couldn’t know. You just struck a nerve: I’ve come here to find my brothers. It’s been almost a year since they went into World’s End. I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t even know if they’re dead or alive. But they’re all the family I have left. I have to find them; if I have to go into hell itself and drag them back—” I broke off, filled with sudden anger.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes. You understand.” Her callused hands clutched at her sleeves. “The need for proof.”

  I frowned at her peculiar choice of words. “What do you want to prove? Whether she’s all right? Whether she’s dead?”

  She stared at me. She shook her head again. “That I love her.”

  I felt my face go empty. I crouched down, pointlessly adjusting a dial on one of my instruments. I only looked up again when I was sure of my expression. And, looking up at her, I wondered what had drawn or driven her daughter into World’s End.

  “She isn’t dead. I’ve had messages from her. But she . . . she isn’t all right. Her mind . . . ” Hahn’s hand moved in vague circles, and her mouth pinched. “She says that Fire Lake speaks to her, through her. I can’t bear knowing that she’s out there, helpless. . . . ” Her eyes were full of pain—and the one other emotion I always recognized. Guilt. “I want her brought back to me, if she can be made to come.”

  I sighed. “Why haven’t you gone after her yourself?”

  She looked away. “I can’t. I’m needed here. The Company needs me, they wouldn’t let me go out there. And besides, no one wants to take me.”

  Afraid, I thought. “What about her father?”

  “Her father is dead.” She looked down, and for a moment her face was bleak with memory. “He was so much like her. Neither of them ever understood. . . . I’m a sibyl, Gedda. And so is she.” Hahn unfastened the high collar of her coveralls, and showed me her trefoil tattoo.

  The shock of recognition left me speechless for a moment. I haven’t been near a sibyl since . . . since I left . . .

  The memory of another face, a young, shining face above that same tattoo, transfixed me. Snow, stars, the teeming streets of a city at Festival time—another world filled my eyes. Tiamat. One stolen night, on a world I would never see again, came back to me in an excruciating moment of loss and longing. And as I remembered I felt the sweet, yearning body of Moon, who was as fair and as untouchable as her name, pressed against my own. She belonged to another man, I belonged to another world . . . and yet that night our need had fused our separate worlds and lives into one—

  When I recovered my wits, Hahn was staring at me with open concern. I remember mumbling something, turning away to hide the sudden hot surge of desire the memory aroused in me.

  Her hand reached out to me, drew back again, as if she were afraid that I feared her touch. Everyone knows there is no cure for the man-made Old Empire virus that turns a sibyl’s brain into a biological computer port. And everyone knows the infection can drive an unsuitable host insane.

  “It’s all right . . . I’m not afraid,” I whispered. Only her blood or saliva in an open wound could infect me. But I understood suddenly why Spadrin had reacted so violently—out of superstitious fear. And I saw Hahn through different eyes, now that I knew the Old Empire’s eternal sibyl machinery had chosen her above all others for her humanity and strength of will. She was not like other human beings. If she was afraid to go after her daughter, it wasn’t for the reasons I’d first imagined. “You know where your daughter is out there?” I asked finally, because I had to say something.

  Hahn nodded, her face filling with relief as she saw that I was not rejecting her. “There’s a—a place, a ruined city called Sanctuary, by Fire Lake. She’s there.”

  “It really exists?” I’d read about the lost city, the way I’d read of Fire Lake itself—as a thing shimmering on the edge of reality, lost in a haze of legend. Supposedly it was a haven for criminals and degenerates fleeing from Hegemonic law, who preyed on fortune-seekers who struck it lucky.

  Hahn nodded again. “I’ve seen it, through her eyes, in—in Transfer.” There was a peculiar hesitation, as if she were leaving something unsaid. “All they say about World’s End is true: To stay there too long is to lose yourself forever.” She glanced down.

  I’d heard that radiation, or perhaps just the strangeness, caused physical and mental deterioration in people who spent too long out there. “Gone to Fire Lake” means “gone crazy” on Number Four. I shook my head. “I don’t know how I can help you. I’ve come to search for my brothers, and I don’t even know how I’m going to do that. It will take all the time I have, and more, just to pick up their trail in that wasteland. I’m sorry, sibyl.”

  I was ashamed to look up at her, ashamed to refuse a sibyl anything, even though logically I had no reason for guilt. Sibyls are the speakers of the Old Empire’s preserved wisdom, the selfless bearers of an artificial intelligence that moves them in strange ways. They say that it is “death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl. . . . ”

  The memory o
f another time still lay like cobweb across my mind’s eye: the memory of another face, gazing up at me with eyes the color of moss-agate. The trefoil sign like a star on her ivory skin. The strength and wisdom that changed everyone she touched—

  When I first met her I saw only an ignorant barbarian girl. But she was the child of a queen, about to become a queen in her own right . . . a sibyl, already fated for a destiny far greater than my own. I was the one who had been unworthy.

  I forced my mind back into the present and watched Hahn try to control her disappointment. After a moment she asked, “Do you have a picture of your brothers? Perhaps I might have seen them somewhere around the town.”

  I pulled out the holo I carry with me and gave it to her. “They look younger there. It’s an old picture.” Once it had been a picture of the three of us. I’d had my own image removed.

  She studied it, and nodded. “Yes . . . yes. I did see them. I spoke to them about my daughter. They were—” She glanced away, embarrassed.

  I felt my face flush, as I imagined what SB’s response must have been. “I apologize to you for their behavior, sibyl. They’ve brought enough shame on my family already to make the shades of our ancestors weep blood.” I looked down, holding my scarred wrists against my sides.

  “There’s something more about them.” She held the holo up, turning it in the light. “Yes . . . I’ve seen them since, somewhere else.” She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration. “In Transfer . . . in Sanctuary.”

  Through her daughter’s eyes, in the sibyl Transfer. That was what she meant. A lead, I thought, a real lead, at last! I exhaled, realized then that I had been holding my breath. A part of my mind resisted, telling me that this was too easy, that she could be lying out of self-interest—that even sibyls were human beings, not machines. I’d seen plenty of faces as open as hers hide every kind of lie. . . .

  But it was the only clue I had, genuine or not. It was something, a place to start—the focus I so desperately needed for my search. Gratitude and hope shouted down my doubts; I felt my mouth relax into a smile for the first time in days. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll go to Fire Lake, I’ll find the city. I’ll look for your daughter, and I’ll bring her back to you if I can. . . . ” I glanced away selfconsciously. “Another sibyl—helped me, once. Maybe it’s time I repaid my debt.”

  “Does Ang know that you’re searching for something besides treasure?” Hahn asked.

  I shook my head. “Not yet. He’s a difficult man to talk to.” It had seemed too awkward to try to explain the truth. I’d decided to wait for a better time.

  “How will you get them to search for what you want to find?”

  I laughed. “I’ll worry about that after I get this damned thing running.” I glanced at the rover, and back at her. “What about Ang, by the way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You came to his place last night. You know him?”

  “We only worked together.” She suddenly looked defensive. “I gave him assignments for years. I thought . . . he promised that he’d help me, when he was free of the Company. He said it so many times. But it isn’t the Company he’s belonged to all these years, it’s World’s End. World’s End has poisoned him, just like—” Her mouth quivered. “Don’t depend on him. And don’t let it happen to you. Whatever you do, don’t lose yourself in World’s End.”

  I smiled again. “I have no intention of it.”

  She looked at me strangely for a moment, before she reached into the soft beaded pouch that she wore at her belt. She brought out two objects and gave them to me. One was a holo of a woman’s face—her daughter, Song. The other was the trefoil pendant of a sibyl, the ancient barbed-fishhook symbol of biological contamination that matched the tattoo at her throat. I’d never held a sibyl’s pendant, and for some reason I was almost afraid to touch it now. I thought suddenly of the day, half a lifetime ago, when my father had sent me to one of the Old Empire’s choosing places. Just to stand before the place where some ancient automaton judged the suitability of the future’s youth to become sibyls had paralyzed me. I had returned home without ever entering it, and told my father that I’d failed the test. . . .

  Hahn stood waiting, still holding out the trefoil. I took it gingerly, let it dangle from its chain between my fingers. A sense of impropriety, almost of violation, filled me as I handled it. I had no right to possess such a thing. “You want me to have this? Why?”

  “A talisman.” She smiled, a little uncertainly. “And a proof. Show it to my daughter, when you find her. Then she’ll know that you come from me.” She gripped my hands suddenly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For whatever you do, thank you so much.” Tears filled her eyes. “I love my daughter, Gedda, even if she can’t believe it. I feel her suffering, every day, and I’m helpless to stop it. Why did I ever . . .” She shut her eyes; tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Why did she leave?” I asked, realizing suddenly that there was still more she hadn’t told me.

  But she only shook her head, turning away. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Please help her—” Her voice broke into sobs. She went quickly away from me, weeping uncontrollably, as if her relief at finding someone to take up her burden had left her defenseless against her grief.

  I watched her until she was gone from sight, feeling a hard knot of unexpected emotion caught in my throat. I looked down at the picture and the trefoil still lying in my hands, knowing that she hadn’t given those things lightly to a stranger. She had told me the truth. She had lost her child, and her suffering was real enough. I know about loss. . . .

  The trefoil threw spines of reflected light into my eyes, making them tear. I remembered suddenly how tears had come into my eyes on the day that I told my father I was leaving home . . . though I never imagined then that it would be forever. I would have broken down like Hahn, if I’d known—

  It was hard enough to keep my composure as I saw his face. “How much . . . how much time have thou to spend with us, before thou must leave?” he asked me. He was standing in the High Hall, erect and dignified in the uniform that he wore even at home, the symbol of his pride as head of a family as old and honorable as any on Kharemough. But his voice sounded strangely weak as he asked the question.

  “A little over a month.” I smiled as I answered, trying to believe that it was a long time. The limpid counterpoint of a choral work by Tithane filled the silence between us, and eased the ache in my throat. I stared out the wide windows at the sky. Pollution aurora marred the perfect blue, a constant reminder of Kharemough’s overworked orbital industries—the price we paid for our leadership in the Hegemony.

  “We must notify thy mother. She will surely want to see thee once more . . . if her work will allow it.”

  I didn’t answer, afraid that anything I said would be the wrong thing. Suddenly my chest hurt. I recited an adhani under my breath. Mother had gotten fed up with us all when I was only five. I could count on the fingers of my hands the times I’d seen her since then. She spent her time on another continent halfway around the world, leading archeological excavations of Old Empire ruins. . . . I had heard so many times as a child that I wasn’t to blame that I was sure it must somehow have been my fault. She didn’t come home before I left Kharemough.

  “Are thou certain this is the right course? After all, thou’re only a boy—” I saw the trembling of his hands, which he usually controlled so well.

  “Father, I’m nearly twenty standards. I already have more degrees than HK and SB put together. I can’t spend the rest of my life studying, preparing for something—” For something I would never have. “I’m a grown man. And I’m not thy heir. It would be dishonorable for me to live here any longer.” But more than that, living with my brothers had finally become unbearable.

  “Scholarship is a respected calling in its own right. Thou could at least remain here on Kharemough, and teach—”

  “No.” I bit my lip, seeing the pain in his eyes. But the pain of s
taying would be far worse.

  “Thou know . . . ” His mouth resisted the words. “.. thou know that I’m not young. It’s true that thou’re last in line to inherit. But to leave Kharemough . . . If something were to happen to thy brothers—”

  “Nothing will happen to them, Father “ If only it would! The violence of the thought almost blinded me. I blinked and glanced away, afraid that he would read it in my eyes, and know. . . . “What could happen to them here?” With malicious spite, my mind showed me half a dozen fatal possibilities.

  He shook his head, leaning against the ancient mantelpiece below the picturescreen. “What, indeed. A weakling and a parasite, left in control of our holdings when I’m gone.” His hand clenched. “Thy mother has no interest in her responsibilities here. And without thee to oversee—”

  “They won’t listen to me when . . . when HK is head of family. It’s better if I leave, better for the family.”

  He sighed. “If only SB had gone in thy place; as he should have, years ago. If only he had been born with thy sense of honor, or HK with thy intelligence. . . . ” He looked up at me. “Or if thou had been born first.” His eyes held mine, searching.

  I took a deep breath, suddenly finding the courage to say what I had never dared to say before. “Father, I know the wisdom of the laws. They were intended to keep society in the control of the ones most capable of running it well. But . . . but here in our family, they don’t . . . they don’t seem . . . ” I went on in a rush, “By our sainted ancestors, Father, can’t thou disinherit them? It would be justice—”

  “Enough!” He pushed away from the mantel, rigid with anger. “You’ve said enough! It’s not in my hands. You will not mention it again.”

  You. Not thou. It stung like a slap. “Forgive me, Father.” I bowed, whispering, “I had no right.” I kept my burning face averted. “May I have . . . your permission to leave you?”