Her possession goes on and on, agonizingly. My own mind grows heavy and dim; I stand gazing out at the surface of fire until my vision burns away and all I see are the phantoms that haunt my inner eye. The hot wind rising up the cliff face stuns me. I imagine myself melting, flowing down to meet the surface of the Lake. . . .
Song breaks out of Transfer again, falls forward against the platform rail. The crowd’s roar of appreciation startles me out of my daze. Song straightens away from the railing, pushing her hair back from her sweating face. She raises her hands again, gasping for breath, to shout, “Is there a judgment? Today the Lake will judge you—through him!” She points.
She is pointing at me. “No!” I say. I try to run toward the ladder, but my feet turn me back again. My body belongs to the Lake now, not to me. I watch numbly as Goldbeard forces someone up the ladder to stand before me—two men, frightened and angry. They begin to argue, accusing each other: “He stole my slave—” “I won him fair—!”
I can’t listen, I refuse to listen, searching for the strength to stop what Song is about to do to me. I cover my ears with my hands again as she cries, “What is the truth?” But Goldbeard jerks my hands down and pins them behind me. The two men back away from us, staring.
“Leave me alone!” I throw myself forward, using the pain of my twisted arms; I shout a sibyl litany—anything, to stop my mind from unraveling like a thread as Song asks the question again and again. I shut my eyes against the sight of the Lake but it burns its way through my lids. No escape—
“What is the truth?”
I sway . . . I feel myself letting go . . . and suddenly far below me the Lake passes through a spectral shift—red orangeyellowgreen blue.
I dissolve, flowing out into the Lake—not my body, but my mind. I am bodiless, infinite, exploding and reforming, disintegrating and reborn; here, there, now, then; boiling with a million memories that have no common ground. Chain reaction without chains, atoms of meaning fissioning into randomness and perversity. I am amorphous sentience, helpless, haunted, raging . . . tortured by loss, by the need for a time that was or would be: For time flowing downstream, ordered, ruled, under control—Control . . . control . . .
“Control!” I am shouting hysterically at the crowd. “Control!” I reel forward to the fence, gasping like a drowned man. The crowd shouts in meaningless exultation, while the Lake pours its maddening poison of frustration into me. Why? Why? I realize that I have seen the very heart of the truth . . . and still I do not understand. What does it mean, what does it mean—?
Then suddenly I remember the two men. I turn slowly, forcing my eyes to stay open. The two men are staring back at me, their own eyes glazed with fear—but they are alive, and whole. The Lake did not touch them. Somehow I have protected them. Relief leaves me limp. “Get out of here,” I whisper, my voice breaking. They do.
I lean on the rail, stupefied and disoriented. When I begin to care what is happening around me again, I see Song waving her arms, flaunting herself, flaunting her control over the crowd. Claiming all that has happened as her own doing. The sight fills me with disgust. But she throws me a look of hidden rage and anguish; she knows that I still don’t have the answer. She uses me, like she uses all of them . . . but she’s still a victim, just like I am.
I have to escape from this place. I go to the ladder and start down it. Song makes no move to stop me. Even Goldbeard seems to believe now that I’m possessed. I wonder if I shouted the same meaningless gibberish that Song did. . . . I stop in midair, clinging to the rungs. I know that I’ve heard those fragments of random speech before. I still hear them, inside my head: the ghost voices. Human voices. Why is it obsessed with humans? What could we possibly mean to something so alien? The Lake stirs, I feel its excitement expand inside me—I drop the last meter to the ground as I lose my grip on the ladder.
The mob backs away from me. I climb to my feet, and they make an opening to let me through. They watch me nervously, as if they expect the sort of theatrics from me that they get from Song. “Just stay away from me!” I shout. They seem more than willing to obey.
I walk back to town along the canyon’s rim, solitary among a crowd of ghosts. The plateau is like an anvil under the hammer of the heat. I wish I had a sun helmet . . . I wish I had some shoes. I am barefoot—I only notice it now, as my bruised and bleeding feet stumble in the rocky path. But pain is almost a relief, by now, like hunger and thirst. Proof of my reality. I wonder how many performances like the one I just saw Song has put on for her subjects . . . and how much choice she has.
And how much chance do I have, caught between her and the Lake? I rub my sweating face with unsteady hands. I have entered the Lake’s mind, the way it enters mine. I have touched the heart of chaos. . . .
And it longs for order. The realization throws my thoughts together like clapped hands. I was right all along. It does want me to fight for control. It wants me to . . . to order it.
The Lake’s elation screams inside me. I sink to my knees, fighting to hold my thoughts above water until it subsides. I get to my feet again, when I can, and go on.
How can I order the Lake? One human mind could never control a force so overpowering, even if it understood what it was controlling. And I don’t even understand that. I look down into the purple-shadowed canyon, despairing—and see the unnatural glint of something silver far below. Waiting. Waiting. . . . I am back at the point where the canyons split. I stare down at the water, at the mystery lying in its depths. I don’t understand why I am obsessed with this spot. Except that this thing is familiar, somehow. I’ve seen it before, somewhere. If I could only get close enough—
Suddenly I see—I know—where there is a narrow path that leads down the cliff face. My eyes spot tiny figures moving along the path, far below. I reach the head of the trail, and start down it.
The others who walk the trail are mostly carrying water, and most of them wear rags and chains. Captives from the wilderness. Slaves. I remember my brothers again suddenly, painfully. If they are still alive, this is what they are enduring. The slaves keep their heads down and avert their eyes when I look into their faces; trying to make themselves invisible.
I start to question one man about my brothers, but his face is utterly empty. I let him pass and stop another. He cringes against the wall and whines. I feel the yielding hopelessness of his body under my hands . . . my hands tighten instinctively until he winces. His fear makes me feel my own power; I want to beat him until he tells me what I need to know—
I release him suddenly, as if he is burning hot, and run on down the trail. When I reach the bottom of the canyon I fall on my knees at the river’s edge and splash myself with water, scrubbing my body with sand until there are no bloodstains left on me. The water is ice cold; I bury my face in it and drink as though there is not enough water on the planet to quench my thirst.
Finally I get to my feet. I stand dripping at the water’s edge and watch its undulating surface form impossible braids and patterns—defying gravity and my own need to see the river move like any river I have ever known. I try to believe that the water will not suddenly break its invisible bonds and drown me. The water murmurs and whispers, but the air is dead around me; there are no echoes falling from the canyon walls. I am alone here now, except for ghosts. A ghost haloed in red is chipping phantom stone from the steps at the foot of the path behind me. I hear her humming inside my head, and push her voice out of my thoughts with a conscious effort. What are these people to you? I ask the Lake, waiting for an answer I know will not come.
A flash of silver rises from the depths of the river as sunlight spills over the canyon’s rim. It strikes me like the clear white light of revelation. I watch the sunlight turn the canyon walls to flame and illumine the river’s blue-green depths. I see the silvery light-catcher clearly at last. It lies meters and meters deep, by the dark green mouth where water flows out of the hidden heart of the world to feed this impossible river. Wreckage. I identify the
pieces of twisted, broken metal for what they are, and my excitement rises. I move along the narrow stretch of shore, clamber up a pile of broken boulders for a better view.
The metal is old, corroded, eaten away by time and the river. Once there must have been more of it . . . a lot more. The river rolls and glitters and suddenly there is a lot more; I glimpse a crumpled form as large as—
The phantom is gone with another shimmer and twist of water, another blink of my eyes. I am not even sure that I saw it. . . . I’m crazy, I see ghosts—Stop it, goddamn you! Analyze! There is still wreckage in the water, but not all of it looks old. I force the wreckage of my thoughts to consider it again. There is a piece of hull . . . a piece of hull. Recognition is rewarded by a dizzying rush of bliss. I shake my head, throwing off the distraction. A piece of hull. I have seen that unmistakable form somewhere, but it fits no ship I have ever seen in the spaceyards. And yet the metal looks new, now—a trick of light and water. There is something marring the perfectly preserved surface: symbols, lettering, words . . . but no language of any world I know. And yet, I know them. I strain forward; my sweating hands slide on the warm surface of the boulder. I can almost see it . . . almost see it in my mind. Where have I seen this?
Suddenly the memory bursts open, and gives me my answer: I see the university, the recording—the image opening inside my head again just as it did so many years ago. . . . The language is ST’choull. The language has been dead for a thousand years. And the ship is a Class Four Estade freighter of the Old Empire.
I slide down from the rocks, deafened by the ululation inside me. I fight myself for a space of clear thought; slowly it comes, and fills with more answers. A ship of the Old Empire crashed here. It must have happened during the Empire’s fall, when refugees fled from world to world. Probably the survivors of the crash built the city up on the plateau. But then they abandoned it. . . . It has lain forgotten for centuries, lost in this heart of desolation. I frown. Why would anyone do so much here, build an entire city, and then abandon it? What could make them . . . The Lake. Was the Lake always here?
My body is wracked by ecstasy. I writhe against the stones as the Lake possesses and rewards me. Stop . . . stop it! Leave me alone! I plead. I claw my way back to reason; crouch strengthless at the foot of the boulders, gasping with helpless gratitude and frustration. “Who cares?” I shout at my demon. “Who cares about a dead city? Who cares why they left?” My frustration turns to killing despair, confusion; I feel my mind falling apart again. Gods, I really am insane. . . . I bury my face in my hands. It’s no use.
“The clues were all there. They’d been there all along, of course,” a voice says ironically; speaking in Sandhi, the language of my home. It is a very familiar voice.
I open my eyes. A ghost haloed in blue stands before me, with a face so familiar that for a moment I am dumbstruck by the sight of it. My father—as he must have looked before I was born. But then I realize that it is not my father . . . it is me.
Me—and yet a stranger, years older. A trefoil shines like a star among the medals and honors that crust my uniform. Seeing them, I seem to know when and where I was given each one, even though I’ve never seen them before. I sit watching as my other self goes on speaking, smoothly, with almost cynical ease—as I have never been able to speak before a crowd. He gazes at me but through me, toward his phantom audience: “. . . though at the time I didn’t consider myself lucky to be in the position. . . . ” He smiles, but his eyes are hiding secrets.
I—he lifts his hands. There are no scars on his wrists. My heart constricts. He pauses, waiting for laughter. I hear the laughter inside my head, and wonder what I would see behind me if I turned to look. I do not turn to look. “I remember how I told myself at the start that someone would find the answer, if they’d only ask a sibyl the right questions. . . . ” He glances down, grimacing at some private memory, and his face—my face—begins to fade.
“Wait! Wait!” I reach out, reach through him. “What questions?” My hand meets solid flesh, closes over an arm. I jerk back from the unexpected contact.
“BZ?” a hoarse voice murmurs in Sandhi. “BZ, is that you? Is it really you?” A familiar Kharemoughi face hangs before mine again—familiar, and yet profoundly changed.
“HK—” I whisper incredulously. I touch the face, and my hand confirms his reality. “HK!” I scramble to my feet, and grab him by the shoulders. “Holy Hands of Edhu! Ye gods . . . I never thought I’d find you alive.”
He sags against me, his legs going out from under him, as if the shock is too much for him. I lower him to the ground and crouch down beside him. “You . . . you . . . what are you doing here?” he asks almost plaintively. “I hardly knew you.”
“I came searching for you.” It is almost too painful to keep looking at him. His once fleshy face is gaunt and haggard. His body is filthy and covered with bruises, his clothes are in rags. There is a metal collar around his neck, an oozing sore on his leg. I wonder morbidly how I must look to him.
“You came?” he asks again. “You came here to find us?” His voice rises. “You fool, you fool—you’re the biggest fool of all!” Irritation prickles inside me. His eyes catch on the trefoil dangling at my chest; he grabs it. “You told them you were a sibyl? Is that how you did it? When they find out, they’ll kill you—” He drops the trefoil, his hands trembling.
“No they won’t,” I say, as calmly as I can. I grip his shoulders. “I really am a sibyl, HK.”
“You? A sibyl?” His eyes focus on me again. “You said you couldn’t . . . you never . . . How? When? Why?”
“Song. Song infected me.” I look down, feeling my face flush, as if he could read how it happened in my eyes. “When I came here.”
“Song!” His eyes bore into my head. “Then you must be crazy, just like she is!” He pulls away from me. “I saw you when I came down here, you looked crazy. You were talking to yourself—”
To myself. For a moment I don’t realize that he means talking to the air. Talking to myself. I saw myself . . . I saw my own future. And I will be—I am—perfectly sane. I begin to laugh, for the first time in months, or maybe years. “I’m sane!” I grab HK again, shaking him, convulsed with laughter. “I really am, HK! It’s going to be all right!” I realize that I am shouting into his cringing face, and try to control myself. I was right to believe in myself, right to go on struggling for my sanity, right to go on living—Relief and pride fill me, and are all my own. I swear on my father’s grave that I will never turn my back on the hard road again.
“HK, listen to me,” I say, more evenly. He averts his eyes; I make him look at me. “Something’s happened to me, and I don’t really know how to deal with it, that’s all. But I’m learning. I’m going to be all right. Somehow it was meant to happen.” I’d never wanted to be a sibyl, never even imagined I was fit to try . . . but I am fit, I take the trefoil in my hands again, feeling its treacherous beauty, barbed with pain. Now, after all I’ve done . . . how is it possible? I swallow the choking tightness in my throat, suddenly remembering the moment when I swallowed the solii, just before Song infected me. “Do you know the truth yet?” she asked me; and said, when I shook my head, “You will.”
HK sits watching me silently. I can’t tell what he is thinking now.
“What about SB?” I look up, trying to convince us both that I am really thinking clearly. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
“All right?” HK’s mouth twists. He scratches under his rags. I try to remember a time in our youth when I even saw him perspire. “SB is as all right as anyone here. He’s a tool.” His voice turns bitter.
“What’s that?”
“A slave with special privileges. Anubah trusts him . . . and he knows enough about the equipment to make himself useful.” HK’s hands tighten into fists.
“What about you? You studied at the Rislanne—”
“I barely know how to use a terminal!” He glares at me. “You know that; you were always pointing it o
ut to me. Do you really think Techs are born smarter than everyone else? Do you really still believe we were on top because we deserved to be?”
“No.” I glance down at my wrists, and shake my head. “I’m not crazy anymore.”
HK gets up. “You were crazy to come here,” he says.
“Yes.” I watch the water move. “I know.”
“I have to get back.” He picks up two pails and fills them clumsily at the river’s edge. Somehow the water lies obediently inside the buckets. He stands looking back at me. “If you want SB, I’ll take you to him.” He starts away, limping. I catch up with him and take the buckets as we begin to climb the path. He leans heavily on my shoulder, until I can hardly keep my balance. My own feet leave a bloody trail behind us.
“HK,” I say, “I’m going to get us out of here.”
He looks at me bleakly. “Don’t say that. Nobody ever gets out of here.”
“We will,” I promise. But the Lake stirs inside me, and suddenly I know that I will never leave this place alive, I will never be really free or in control of myself again—unless I solve the mystery that lives in my head, answer the riddle, ask the right questions. . . .
“You see?” HK mutters. “You know it too.”
I don’t answer. We reach the top of the cliff, panting and giddy from the pitiless heat, and start into the town. I try not to flinch as ghosts walk through me, hoping HK doesn’t notice. My own ghost . . . I did see myself, safe and sane, in the future. All in blue. The way I saw my mother, in the past, in red. Song in red; my brothers in blue. As if I saw my own memories made into ghosts. . . .
But how can I remember things that haven’t happened yet? How can I believe such a thing, how can I know that they aren’t simply delusions? My confidence crumbles. They’re consistent! my mind insists. Past and future are always consistent colors—Why? And what about the rest of the ghosts—whose memories are they?
World's End Page 16
