World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  Those things mean something together, they are too familiar. I stop in my tracks. The Lake turned blue. As I slipped into Transfer there on Song’s stage, I thought I saw Fire Lake changing from red to blue. . . . Time dilation. The visual effects are like the changing colors of space seen from a ship approaching the speed of light. The universe shifted toward blue ahead, shifted red behind. The color of whole galaxies approaching or receding from our own at near lightspeed, in the infinity of space. . . . What does time look like from the other side?

  Paradox. I’m living inside a paradox, time is flowing both ways—I feel ecstasy set fire to every nerve.—No, wait—

  “BZ! Goddamn it—!”

  I am sprawled on the ground; I realize that HK has pushed me down. I sit up, shaking my head. I am sitting in a puddle.

  “You spilled the water!” he whines. “You spilled it all, damn you! Now I’ll have to go back down. . . . ” He wipes his nose with his hand, mumbling.

  I get up, wiping my hands on my pants, leaving rust red smears of grit. I can’t understand why he is upset, when my own problem is so much greater. “I’m so close!” My hands make fists. “I need a place to think and be quiet—” I look away, toward Song’s tower.

  “SB will kill me! You selfish . . . you spilled it. You go back and get more.” HK waves his hand.

  “What?” I blink at him.

  “More water! SB wants it now. He’ll—”

  I stare him down, disgusted. “Just take me to him. He’ll understand when he sees me.”

  HK’s shoulders droop. He picks up the empty buckets and we go on through town. We reach the end of a wall that is half sheer rock; beyond it I see someone crouched in the scant shade of a doorway. I know who it is even before he raises his head.

  “SB?” HK calls.

  SB looks up. He wears a collar too. He has changed, but not as much as HK. He is clean-shaven; the lines of his face are harder, sharper than they were. A livid scar marks his jaw. “Where the fuck have you been? What took you so long?” He gets to his feet, glaring.

  “Look, SB, look—” HK pushes me forward like a shield.

  “Who are you?” SB asks, but he is already staring at me. He half frowns. “BZ—?” He reaches out to touch me. “I don’t believe it. You look like shit, little brother.” He grins.

  I nod, letting myself smile. “It’s mutual.”

  “Ye gods,” he whispers, as the realization registers. “You came here after us.”

  I nod again.

  “And you didn’t bring an army, the Blues—?”

  “No.” I shrug. “I barely got here myself.”

  “Wonderful,” he says sourly. “And you always said the Child Stealer gave HK’s brains to some lowborn. . . .” He picks up the thing he was working on when he saw us—a restricted tightbeam hand weapon. He tosses it at me; I catch it by reflex. “Here. I can’t fix this—I’ve never even seen one before. You do it.”

  Old resentment twinges like a toothache, but I sit down and pick up his tools. “It’s wonderful to see you too.”

  “What the hell do you expect? Are we supposed to be happy to see you trapped here like us? So we can all rot together?” SB looks up at HK again. “Where’s the water?”

  “BZ spilled it.” HK shuffles his feet.

  “Then go get more.” SB points with his chin.

  “I’m sick, SB. I’m tired. I can’t. . . . ”

  “Let him rest, for gods’ sakes,” I say to SB. “It’s hotter than hell.”

  SB ignores me. “Do you want me to tell Anubah you’re too tired, again? That you’re too sick to work for him anymore?”

  HK’s freckles stand out starkly pale against his skin. “No, SB. . . .” He glances nervously at the rug-hung doorway. “Is he inside?”

  SB shakes his head. “He’s with Gerth. And you know how he gets afterward.”

  HK picks up the pails and limps away with them.

  SB watches him go, with a slow smile.

  I break open the butt of the tightbeam weapon and study its filaments through a magnifier. He’s your own brother! My jaw clenches over the pointless words. And both of you are still mine. I wonder what I expected. I force myself to concentrate on the workings of the gun; my hands tingle with the Lake’s unwanted pleasure in my competence.

  “Why did you come?” SB asks me at last.

  I look up at him. “Because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  He smiles the crippled smile again, looking for the scars on my wrists. “Did you think World’s End would do what you didn’t have the guts to do yourself?” He tugs at his collar.

  I look down at my scars, and back at SB again, remembering the disdain in his eyes the last time we met. There are no scars on his wrists; none on HK’s either. And suddenly the weals on my own arms are only healed flesh, nothing more. SB breaks my gaze. I snap the gun back together, and hand it to him. “There’s nothing wrong with this. The charge is used up, that’s all.”

  His frown comes back; he takes it wordlessly.

  “Anubah—owns you?” I ask. The words feel awkward and ugly.

  “Yes.” I barely hear his answer. His fingers fumble with the gun.

  I take a deep breath, shutting my eyes against a stabbing memory of cages and pain. “HK said he trusts you. He trusts you enough to let you work on a weapon like that?”

  SB laughs harshly. “As long as I wear this.” He tugs at his collar again.

  “A block?” I ask, looking at it with sudden recognition.

  He nods. “If we try to use anything with a power charge while we’re wearing this—” He makes an abrupt, brutal motion. “Anubah’s got the control.”

  I shake my head. “Where the hell do they get something like that, here?”

  “They trade for it, trade whatever they can find out there—trade for everything they can’t steal off of poor bastards like us.”

  “With whom?”

  “The Company.” He shrugs. I raise my eyebrows. “Thousands of people work for the Company,” he says, “and most of them barely get a living out of it. There are plenty who’ve willing to deal with real criminals, since they work for thieves already. At least this way they get their share.”

  I remember Ang, and I nod.

  “You’re not wearing a collar.” He stares at me. “Are you free? How? Why?”

  I show him the trefoil. “I wear this.”

  “A sibyl sign?”

  I explain again, as briefly as possible.

  He gapes at me, like HK did. “By all our ancestors, you’re the last one I’d ever expect. . . . But you sound sane enough. Are you sure you’re infected?”

  I watch a ghost wander through him, and through the rug that hangs motionless across the doorway. The Lake stirs restlessly inside me. I laugh once. “I’m sure.”

  “Not everyone around here is afraid of sibyls. Some of them really are insane . . . and some of them don’t have enough imagination to go crazy, or to be afraid of anything either. Your luck won’t hold forever.”

  “They don’t touch Song.” But I remember that she still keeps Goldbeard and a company of guards.

  “Song!” He makes her name into a curse. “Everyone needs gods . . . especially in a place like this. If they don’t have gods they invent them. They think she has power over Fire Lake—that her being here keeps Sanctuary from melting down and running into some crack in space.”

  “She does.”

  “What?” He snorts with laughter.

  “She does communicate with the Lake. So do I. It’s something to do with a sibyl’s ftl receptivity, but I don’t completely understand it yet. I see and hear things you wouldn’t believe, since . . . ”

  “Shit, you are insane.” He looks away. “And so is she. She’s crazier than anyone here—or she’s a better actor than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

  “She’s both.” I sigh, remembering the first time I saw her. “But she’s trapped here just like the rest of us. And I swore I’d get her out—�
� I watch his face fill with disbelief “—just like I swore I’d get you out, and HK.”

  “Why, for gods’ sakes?”

  I stare at him. Finally I shake my head. “I wish I knew.” I put out my hand. “Give me the gun.”

  He pulls back, his body tensing. “Anubah—”

  “Tell him it was ruined. He trusts you.”

  SB grimaces. But then he nods, and hands me the gun. “If you can find a powerpack maybe you’ll stay free a little longer, anyway.”

  “Long enough to get us all out of here.” I fight down a wave of sickening self-doubt. “I will—!” I push the gun through my belt, covering it with my jerkin.

  SB glances from side to side, his hands clenching. “Yes, by all the gods! You can do it, BZ. Get us out of here. We’ll steal a flyer. We can do it now, before Anubah—”

  “No. I have to . . . I have to . . . find . . . ” I stumble over words as the Lake pours its anguish into me. “I can’t leave yet . . . I have to find . . . I don’t know why yet. . . . ”

  “What’s the matter with you?” SB shouts. He slaps me. “Goddamn you, forget about Song. We’re your brothers! She’s nothing but a lunatic.”

  I climb to my feet, rubbing my face. He grabs at my clothes as I rise, trying to hold on to me. I jerk free as HK comes up behind me. HK stops uncertainly, his face running with sweat. Suddenly the watch begins to chime in my belt pouch.

  “My watch,” HK murmurs, when the chiming stops. “You found my watch.” He reaches out, pawing at my belt. “Let me see it. Let me have it—”

  I slap his hand away. “You lost it. I got it back. It’s mine now.” I look down, touching the pouch. “It was never yours to begin with.”

  His face crumples. “But it was all I had left.”

  “You’ve still got your life.” I glance at SB. “I’ll be back. I’ve always done my duty.”

  I make my way through the tumbled, stone—and rubbish-choked passages between buildings, out into an open square where I can get my bearings. I start upward, climbing ladders and steps, toward the heights where Song’s tower lies. I will go there and wait for her. I try not to think about what will happen then; afraid of the Lake’s response, when it knows my every thought. . . .

  I turn a corner and collide with another body; curses wrench me back into the present. “You son of a bitch—” the stranger says. He breaks off, shaking his head. “Whose are you?” he says, his eyes narrowing as he looks me over, and doesn’t see a weapon. His voice is slurry with drink or drugs; his eyes are bloodshot.

  For a moment I don’t realize what he’s asked. “I’m nobody’s . . . I’m a sibyl.” I touch my trefoil.

  His face turns greedy instead of afraid. “Then I can use you.”

  “I belong to the Lake!” I say. “I have Song’s protection.”

  “She didn’t tell me that.” He laughs, and there is a knife in his hand. He flashes it at me almost carelessly. “Come on, pilgrim.” His other hand closes over my arm, twisting it.

  I bring my knee up into his groin; he bellows with pain and drops the knife. I break his grip on me and pull the beamer out of my belt.

  He stares at it stupidly, as if I’d done magic like Song. I am a victim, a slave; he can’t believe that I am defying him.

  I pick up the knife. “I’m doing you a favor,” I say, before he can start to think. “I told you I belong to the Lake. I could have torn you apart—”

  He frowns uncertainly, still hunched over with pain.

  “Come after me and I will,” I finish, telling him something I’m sure he’ll understand. I turn my back and walk on, trying to listen through the muttering of my voices for any motion behind me. But he doesn’t follow. As I put another block of buildings between us I begin to breathe again. Now I wear the gun and the knife openly, as well as the trefoil, realizing that SB is right—my luck is running out. I walk faster.

  I hide the gun again as I reach Song’s tower and see the guards. The avenue of bones and the entrance with its leering skull sicken me. I can’t believe that once I walked this path eagerly—and yet the memory lies as deep and perfect as a solii inside of me. I pass the guards. Their eyes follow me up the steps one more time.

  Song has already returned. She stands at the window of the tower, staring out at Fire Lake. She doesn’t seem to hear me as I cross the room to her. I touch her arm, say her name softly, trying not to startle her.

  She turns, blinking at me, and her eyes are red with weeping.

  “What is it—?” I begin. But I already know: the helplessness, the terrible sense of loss and futility—the Lake, which eats away at our wills, never leaving us alone. I’ve barely been able to survive it for this long, even with the adhani and Moon’s guidance; but she has no control, no protection at all. How long has she endured this torture? How long has she waited for someone who could end it?

  “Song,” I say again. “I’ve found my brothers. We can all leave here now.” I realize that she can make it easy for us; no one will touch her, or disobey her.

  But her eyes fill with terror. “No! I can’t leave the Lake. . . . Why don’t you save me?”

  “I will—”

  “You’re lying. You want to leave here.”

  “And take you with me!”

  “No! You don’t understand anything!” She pulls away from me, distracted, and moves across the room. When she looks back again her eyes are smoldering and unreadable. “Yes, I’ll come. But I want you to bring something for me.”

  I nod encouragingly, and she points through the doorway into the next room. I go to the doorway to see what she wants. “Over there,” she says, “the fire globe.” I move forward, and she shoves me into the room. The door slams behind me.

  “Song!” The door is locked, of course. I beat on it with my fists. “Don’t do this to me! Open the door, goddamn it!” The door is made of metal—Ship-metal, I think irrelevantly—and I bruise my hands. I can see her through the filigree work of an inset panel.

  “Stay there!” she cries. “Stay there until you save me or you starve!”

  I kick the door and turn away, swearing furiously at her, at my own gullibility. I go to the window and look out, and down. The tower sits on a ledge of rock; the fall would kill me. I look up again, and the Lake is watching me, winking its many-faceted eyes at me, eyes that look forward and backward through time. “What are you, you souleater?” I shout. “Are you alive? Are you some kind of alien?” But those are not the right questions, and the voices in my mind scream the gibberish of the ages. “Then damn you!” People stare up at me. I pull back from the window.

  And my father is standing before me in the room, haloed in red.

  I gasp and fall back against the sill, wiping my hand across my mouth. His ghost. “F-father?” I ask, and wait for him to tell me what he wants.

  “Thou are all I have that makes me proud,” he says. His hands reach out to me. His eyes beg me to understand what he cannot ask, will not say. . . .

  “Say it!” I shout, raw-voiced. “Say it this time, for gods’ sakes, you coward! Goddamn you, you coward, you coward—why did you blame me? It was your duty, not mine! Yours, yours, yours. . . . ”

  I slide down to the floor, into a pile of clutter, hurling things across the room, hearing them shatter. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t. Feeling the pressure released, the pain ebbing away, the abscess draining in my soul. . . .

  “Gods, Father. . . . ” I murmur at last, slumping back against the cool stone of the wall. “The answer was so easy then.” I pull myself up, and take deep breaths, reciting an adhani to focus myself. To find the right answer, you have to ask the right questions. Talking to the Lake is not so different from the Transfer, after all. Pushing away from the windowsill, I begin to pace off the small clear space at the center of the room. I count my steps, I measure the limits of my prison, I force my mind to grow calm and rational. I’ve spent my whole life running away from this moment. This time I will face the problem and find the answer,
or else this time it really will be the end.

  I realize that I need something to help me hold on to my clues if the Lake makes me lose control again. For the first time since I have come here I remember my belt recorder. I switch it on. It still works. I shudder as I hear my own last words. I advance it. I begin to record the data I have gathered, the pieces that almost fit; speaking aloud, afraid to imagine what sort of static it would register if I tried to use thought-record.

  What have I seen? I count the anomalies on my fingers: “Relics of the Old Empire; a ship. Electromagnetic distortion. Space and time distortion. A river that ties itself in knots; buildings cut in half by pieces of stone; things that defy all reason, and yet must be real. . . . ”

  What do I feel? Helpless anticipation pours into me; I slam the floodgates of my concentration with all my will. “Emotions not my own. Images, ghosts—memories out of the past and the future . . . somehow. It all seems tied to a sibyl’s receptivity; only a sibyl experiences these things, this sensitivity to the Lake.”

  What is the common denominator? I sink my teeth into my fist, holding on to the thought as the Lake’s excitement rises. I see a pattern, an undeniable pattern: “The ship! The ship is the key, the ship that crashed here traveled faster than light. The Old Empire had a stardrive, bioengineered to manipulate space-time . . . an artificial intelligence!”

  I run back to the door, clinging to the tracery of metal vines. “Song!” I shout.

  She turns away from the window, her body taut with anticipation.

  “What formed you?” I watch her fall almost eagerly into Transfer. The Lake rushes into my mind; I keep shouting questions. “Was it the stardrive from the ship that crashed here? Is it still alive—?”

  “Yes . . . ” the Lake whispers, echoing, echoing in my head. “Lost . . . lost in time .. buried alive! Your servant. . . . ”

  My vision, my hearing, are ablaze with phantoms. At last I understand the Lake’s obsession with humans—its creators, its gods.

  But it drove them away. “Why did you destroy this city? Why do you cause chaos in World’s End?” The stardrive was designed to do one thing only: to manipulate the space-time continuum, to permit timelike movement by a ship through space without paradox. It could never be allowed to act on whim, or it would catastrophically disrupt human civilization. It was by definition a creature of perfect sanity and control. But it acts randomly, unpredictably . . . Insanely