World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  Finally I stagger away from the window, faint with hunger and exhaustion. I force myself to choke down what is left of Song’s food, although the pointlessness of eating knots my stomach. And then I go to her bed and fall across it, and sleep some more.

  When I wake she is still gone. I have no idea what time it is. I wander in a daze through the empty, silent rooms of the tower. It surprises me that I am alone, that Song does not have servants surrounding her here like she does outside, to wait on her every need. Are they all so afraid of her? Or doesn’t she want her subjects that close to her? One of the rooms is a bathroom, and it actually functions. I use it, unspeakably grateful for privacy and comfort. Water actually flows from the cracked spout of the ornate tub. I splash myself, trying to clean the grime and painted patterns from my body; too tired to wonder how I came to be painted, or to care that all I do is make more tracks in the filth. I can’t remember why it matters, anyway. Shivering, I go back into the bedchamber. My clothes are still there, torn and stinking rags. I pull my pants on awkwardly; my clumsy body seems to belong to someone else. Only its pain belongs to me. I sigh as I fasten the pants, hating the touch of the stiff, dirty cloth against my raw skin, and yet somehow comforted by it. There are other clothes, better ones, among the heaps of offerings piled up around the room.

  There’s one of everything ever made here, I think, and hear my own idiot laughter. Jewels, tools, odd pieces of furniture and broken equipment. I pick up a leather vest woven with gems and metal and put it on like protective armor. But I see the Lake as I glance up, and it calls me. I go back to the window again. I stand watching helplessly, gaping into otherwhere, while the Lake turns my mind inside out.

  Until suddenly a familiar tinkling chime unlocks the prison of my obsession. I turn distractedly, and see my belt lying across the bed. The silvery music stops abruptly, before its pattern is complete. I rush to the bed, fumbling open my pouch. All that is left inside it is my father’s watch. I shake the watch with trembling hands, and listen as it finishes its chime. I kiss it.

  Time lives! Gravity still holds me to the planet’s surface. Somewhere in the universe electrons spin along in orderly subatomic paths, planets circle suns, galaxies spiral through the night. Pattern balances chaos. The knowledge fills me with triumph . . . triumph overwhelms me, reflecting back and back in the mirrors of my insanity, until my thoughts fall to pieces.

  I hold the watch up to my eyes, trying desperately to remember . . . “My brothers! I came here to find my brothers!” I shut my eyes, make myself see their faces; I rebuild my sense of purpose bit by bit out of broken fragments. . . .

  And when I open my eyes again they stand before me, ragged, hazed in blue. I can see the sky through their backs. “HK? SB? Where—where are you?” I ask, barely believing what I see. “Are you alive? Tell me where—”

  “You can’t be serious,” SB sneers. “You’re going to give it away?”

  He is not answering what I say, but the voice of some angry ghost inside my head. Shut up! I think furiously, trying to shout down my madness—realizing suddenly that the ghost voice I hear is my own.

  But when I focus my eyes again I am alone, listening to the memory of a conversation with my brothers . . . not the one I just had, but another one, that I know has never happened.

  I get up from the bed, cursing in frustration, with the watch clutched in my hand. The room is an obstacle course of things Song has extorted from her worshipers. I kick my way through silver dishes and dismantled terminals; walking in circles, forcing myself to pass the window again and again without looking out. And every time I do, the compulsion, the yearning, the need, to look out at Fire Lake leaves me weak. Somehow I am the Lake’s victim, as much as I am Song’s. “You belong to the Lake now.” Everything she told me after she infected me must be true. I begin to believe the incredible evidence of my senses, even though I don’t know how or why Fire Lake has invaded my mind. I may be crazy, but the Lake’s power over me is real enough.

  And if it is real, then somehow there has to be a way to break it. I go back to the bed and lie down again. I count, I calculate, I recite a dozen different alphabets out loud to keep my thoughts my own. The watch chimes, marking meaningless segments of time. Outside the window the sky darkens; the chamber fills with the glow of Song’s fire globe. I begin to lose my voice, I begin to repeat myself. I try to picture Moon, the one person whose face I can still bear to see. I talk to her memory about the memories we share, trying to speak coherently . . . until gradually her memory becomes so real to me that I do see her, reaching out to me, in a halo of blue light. I sit up, calling her name—

  I wrench myself back miserably to the multiplication tables. I count on my fingers, as my diseased mind fights me like an addict’s, wanting only to surrender to chaos, to flow out into the Lake’s haunted dream world. Struggle is pointless, chaos whispers in my head. Pattern is an illusion, order is a lie, the universe is random. Suns die, worlds collide, life is an accident, meaningless and futile. You are insane. You control nothing. . . .

  “The periodic table of elements is not a lie!” I shout hoarsely, and refuse to listen. And as time crawls by I feel my confidence returning, a little. I can hold on. It can’t force me fo do anything I don’t want to do. I’ll learn to live with it, if I have to. Song does. But I know that I can only retain this much control by putting all my concentration into it. I can’t do that forever. It’s only a matter of time. . . . Despair fills me again.

  And what about the rest? it cries. I’m infected! Every time I hear a question I can’t answer, my mind goes out of my body. I can’t live a sane life that way!

  I can learn to control it.

  Only a sibyl can do that. I’m not a sibyl, I wasn’t chosen, I’m not right for it! I’m not strong enough. (My legs tangle in bedding and I fall.) I can’t!

  How do I know? I’ve never tried.

  “But I’m crazy—” I sit back on the floor, striking my knees with my fists.

  Not as crazy as when I came here.

  I watch, stupefied, as memories that could not possibly be mine flood my mind’s eye. I remember my journey here; I remember its end. . . . I saw the face of one woman on the body of another, and used her, like an animal. . . .

  I murdered a man in cold blood.

  “No! No, no . . . ” I hold my head, knowing that the memory of the bloody knife driving into his chest will explode out of my skull, that my heart will stop, that surely now damnation will swallow me up at last—

  He killed Ang! He would have killed me! I had, I had to kill him—

  But not like that. Not like that. The voices in my head wail a dirge—the voices of a thousand ancestors crying my shame, avenging furies that will torment me forever for my crime. I sink down again, embracing my punishment, and my guilt. I belong here after all. This is fitting.

  And yet, some small, stubborn part of my mind insists that even my guilt proves I am no longer what I was. That I am someone new, reborn. . . .

  After a long time I am calm enough to remember where I am again. I hear someone enter the outer room. From the light tread, I guess that it is Song. I stumble to my feet, sick with anticipation. How can I protect my mind from her—how can I control the Transfer?

  Control the Transfer. I see half the answer, in a sudden flash of clear thought . . . and maybe more.

  Song appears in the doorway, her face burnished by the chamber’s ruddy light. Before she can open her mouth I shout, “Question, sibyl! I have a question for the sibyl Moon Dawntreader Summer of Tiamat—” not knowing if I ask the impossible, not caring.

  “No!” Song flings up her hands in protest. But her body goes rigid and her eyes glaze as the Transfer carries her away.

  I move close to her, watching her pitilessly, straining for a sign of someone else’s presence. Her eyelids flutter; her eyes look at me, through me, all around me—back into my own. She gasps.

  “Moon?” I murmur. “Moon, is it really you?” I brush Song’s
cheek uncertainly. I can’t believe that I have really called her here to me.

  Song’s body quivers, as if someone else longs to move it. “Yes . . . ” she whispers. “BZ! How . . . what do you . . . want of me? Please . . . give me more information.”

  It is all she can do, imprisoned in the Transfer’s eye. I try to focus my own addled thoughts, afraid that I will lose her— “I’m . . . I’m here on Number Four, at a place called Fire Lake. I need help. Something gets into my head all the time, and . . . ” Rambling! Stop it! “I’m a sibyl, Moon! Someone infected me, the woman who sees me now for you. She wasn’t meant to be a sibyl . . . she’s out of her mind.” I swallow painfully. “And I think . . . I think I am too. I’m trapped here, I can’t get help from anyone else. Tell me how you control the Transfer! Every time I hear a question—”

  “A sibyl. . . . ” Song’s voice reaches out to me, but it is Moon who fills the words with compassion. “Don’t be afraid of the infection, BZ. It doesn’t have to make you insane. Fear of it can be your worst enemy. I know you . . . I know that—” Song’s hands twitch— “that the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever met must have been meant for this. That you must have been chosen, somehow. . . . ” Song takes a deep breath. “It’s difficult for everyone, at first. Complete understanding . . . complete control of the process takes many months. But I can give you enough to help you. There are word formulas for the channeling of stimuli, patterns that become a part of your thought processes in time, like—” she breaks off, as the sibyl mind searches for a meaningful analogy, “the adhani discipline practiced on Kharemough.”

  “Really? I practice that—”

  “Use it, then. It will help you concentrate. But there are key words you need to make a part of it. You know that there is a kind of ritual to the formal sibyl Transfer; it starts with the word input. No other questions need to be recognized. Learn to block casual questions by concentrating on the word stop.”

  “Stop?” I say, incredulous. “That’s all?”

  “Yes. It’s very simple; it has to be. But there’s much more . . . ” Her own words flow easily now, a clear stream.

  I gaze into her eyes as I repeat every phrase, seeing Song’s face but knowing Moon’s heart and mind lie behind it. The knowledge helps me focus on her words; I am afraid to lose even one in the clamoring wilderness Song has made of my mind.

  At last she has told me all that she can. “. . . it takes time. Believe in yourself. This is not a tragedy; it could be a blessing. Perhaps it was meant to be.”

  Never, I think, knowing the truth about what I have become. But I whisper, “Thank you.” I touch Song’s face again. Her eyes shine with tears. “You don’t know what this means to me—” I take her hands in mine and kiss them. “I love you, Moon. I’ll never love anyone else. I’ve hated myself ever since I left Tiamat.” I take a deep breath. “I can tell you that now, because I know I’ll never see you again.” I try to see her as she must be—no longer a pale, stubborn barbarian girl, but a woman, a queen, the leader of her people. The once painful knowledge only makes me love her more.

  Song blinks her eyes, and sudden tears run down her cheeks. “I need you,” she cries, like the crying of sea birds. Her eyes begin to stare.

  “Moon!” I clutch Song’s shoulders, clutching at the spirit that inhabits her. My kiss smothers the last words that come to her lips: “No further analysis!”

  Song sways; I catch her as she falls and lay her down on the bed. I straighten up again, still feeling the moist pressure of her lips against mine. “I need you.” Were those words really Moon’s, or her own? She stares darkly at me, wiping her eyes, but she says nothing. I look away. Twice now I have used her body to answer my need for Moon. . . . I tell myself angrily that I haven’t used her half as badly as she has used me.

  I leave her alone in the tower and go out into Sanctuary. The night is red with the Lake’s unquiet glow. There are still many people moving through the ghosts in the levels of the ancient city, in the relative coolness of the night. I see lights in windows, and hear shouts and laughter and screams. Some of the lights are phantoms, and some of the voices echo inside me. I hear Spadrin’s last scream, and I stumble against a wall, clinging to the rough stone.

  I push myself away and move on, passing through ghosts, watching buildings melt and reform like mutating tissue inside clouds of ghost-light. It is almost as though I am looking through time, seeing Sanctuary’s history unfold, superimposed on reality. I wonder how many people actually live here in the present, and how many of them are sane. . . . I hold the trefoil briefly; let it fall against my chest again, touching it now and then with my fingers as I walk.

  “So, pilgrim, did you get what you came for?” a voice asks me unexpectedly.

  The sudden question almost throws me into Transfer. My mind stumbles and pulls itself together desperately. Stop! Stop! “Yes! . . . What?” I find myself staring up into Goldbeard’s mottled face. “What do you want?” I glare at him, because his expression fills me with cold fear. I remember that he heard me tell Song I wasn’t a sibyl. But I am a sibyl. . . . Slipping, slipping. Concentrate! Stop. I take deep breaths, mumbling an adhani; knowing that it’s futile, but somehow succeeding anyway.

  “I want what belongs to me—”

  For a moment my floundering brain thinks he means the watch.

  “—the solii.”

  I blink. “The . . . Song gave you your reward.” I try to push past him, but he grabs my arm.

  “A lousy diamond. Where’s the solii?”

  I have to stop and remember. And then I tell him.

  His jaw drops in moronic disbelief, snaps shut again with fury. “I’ll spill your guts and find it, pilgrim—” He shakes me. “Only . . . ” He lets me go abruptly. “She says not to touch you. She says you belong to the Lake now.” He stares at me, as if he is seeing the sweat-streaked designs on my face for the first time.

  I nod, eager to make him believe it.

  “You hear the Lake talk?” he asks. “You see the future and the past?”

  “Does . . . does she?”

  “Sure.” He nods, and I feel a giddy wash of relief. I was right. The ghosts, the buildings, are not hallucinations . . . they’re something else. . . . One less symptom, one more clue. “Do you see them?” I ask.

  He laughs, and spits. “Nah. She’s the sibyl, the one got power over the Lake. It has her, and it leaves us alone.”

  “What do you mean?” The more I know about Song, the more I will know about what she has really done to me.

  He shrugs impatiently. “I told you. The Lake does crazy things. It sucks you up and spits you out some other time. It makes things change so you can’t find them. Look around here—” He waves a hand, covering an arc of jumbled ruins. “Only here it’s better now, since the Lake has her. She takes care of us.” He strikes his chest with a huge hand. “And I take care of her. I get rid of anybody tries to do anything wrong with her.” His eyes gleam with fanatical promise. “But she said let you alone . . . for now.”

  “What does it want with her?”

  “You tell me!” he snorts. “You tell me, pilgrim. What does it want with you? What does she want with a limp one like you? Did she have you?” He stares me up and down, eyeing the painted whorls that cover my skin. Echoes of lust and sudden shame burn inside me, fire and ice.

  He reads the answer in my face, and his own face fills with sullen envy. His hands clench. Even he is afraid to touch her. . . . And now I recognize the real source of her power. Her magic is just a game; even her sibyl’s blood is nothing but a symbol. All her power over them lies with the Lake, in her control over it. But Goldbeard doesn’t understand the Lake’s power any more than I do.

  She said I’m the one who was supposed to understand. But I don’t understand! I feel my concentration dissolving like bubbles in an undersea swell of futility. There is someone else I need to ask Goldbeard about, something else I need to know. And he can tell me, if I can just hold on.
. . .

  By the time I recapture my drifting consciousness he is gone, and I am standing alone inside a crowd of rattling blue ghosts. They hover in the air; they seem to be doing something technical . . . I can’t find the strength to wonder what it is. I push through them as if they aren’t there, and move on aimlessly into town.

  She said I’m the one; but I’m the wrong one. She’s crazy—and so am I. The hopelessness of everything numbs my brain. I only want to forget. . . . I let my mind wander, until somehow I am reliving scenes from an Old Empire romance that I read long ago—the story of the first sibyl who ever lived, of how she survived in the days of the Empire’s fall. The daughter of bioscientists, blessed and cursed by the divine madness that was the legacy of her murdered parents, she was lost on alien worlds, victimized by the family she thought she could trust . . . with only one true friend in the entire galaxy, one man who loved her and knew she was not insane. And she believed he was dead. . . .

  I blunder into a pile of rubble and fall down, ripping the knees of my pants, bruising my palms. The pain clears my head, and I swear with disgust. Stupid, romantic crap—a book I left behind on Tiamat because I never wanted to see it again. I wonder why I even remember. . . .

  Because she never gave up! my mind says angrily. She fought for her sanity, for her life, and she won. She saved herself, and the future. . . . It isn’t over yet. It isn’t over until you surrender.

  I sit back against a pillar, holding on to the present with all my strength. I look up, focusing on the shadowed portico of the abandoned building. A dim finger of ruddy light points into the building’s darkened interior, touching a wall of solid rock. There is no one inside, not even a ghost. I wonder what this place really was. . . . What was this city? Irrational pleasure fills me as I ask, and then uncontrollable frustration when I don’t have the answer. “I should know! Why don’t I know—?”