World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  It is the middle of the night when we land at the Company’s field. The agents search us with grueling thoroughness; but they can’t prove we aren’t what we claim, and even they have some respect for sibyls. HK and SB watch me tensely, but I am not about to give my secret to the Company. The globe is tossed aside as a useless curiosity; I pick it up again as soon as the agents leave the rover. They impound our vehicle, knowing we don’t dare complain. We’ll never see it again. But it doesn’t matter. We are free, and safe.

  I lead Song as we leave security; she follows me docilely, her eyes on the globe. I look for her mother beyond the gates, somehow expecting that she will know to meet us there; but she doesn’t. I want to ask where she lives, but SB and HK insist that we book passage back to Foursgate before I begin my search. I give in, because I want to believe we are really getting out of here as much as they do.

  People gape at us as we walk through the port authority buildings. I am beyond caring what anyone thinks; my credit is still good enough. The first shuttle that will take us back to Foursgate does not leave for a day and a half.

  We eat a real meal at the port, ordering enough food to make the table creak. Song does not touch hers. As I listen to my brothers’ endless, whining attempts to change my mind about Our Treasure, my own ravenous appetite shrivels and my stomach tightens around a lump of cold contempt. I pick at my food, ignoring them, until at last they stop speaking. Their eyes watch me with sullen speculation. They mutter to each other words I can’t make out.

  At last SB says, “Well, if you’re going to get rid of her”—gesturing at Song— “let’s get it over with.”

  I nod, surprised, and we take her back into town. It is midmorning already; a hot mist clings to us as we walk. I am filled with an eerie sense of déjà vu as we walk the white, shuttered streets. Welcome to World’s End. SB roams ahead impatiently, asking for the sibyl. Most people won’t answer him; I can hardly blame them. I follow more slowly, burdened down by my beaten body, by Song’s lack of will and HK’s complaints about his leg.

  SB reappears from around a corner, just when I think we’ve lost him completely. “Down here!” he calls. “She’s down here.”

  We follow him down the alleyway. We are in a part of the town I don’t know at all, emptier and even more run-down than the rest of it. Unwholesome fungal life oozes out of cracks and crannies. SB leads us into a peeling courtyard. The buildings here look deserted. I can’t believe Hahn is forced to live in a place like this. The instincts of long experience begin to jangle inside me, and I try to force my brain to function. “SB, this doesn’t—”

  “In here,” he insists, holding open a door. “She doesn’t want anyone to know about this.”

  That makes a kind of painful sense, and I lead Song forward. HK shuffles behind me. I search the room with a glance as we enter it, but there is no one else here. “SB, what the hell—” I begin angrily.

  He shrugs. “We needed a place to have one more little talk about our future. HK, get the globe and bring it to me.”

  HK jerks the globe from my hand, and moves to SB’s side. SB sits on the edge of a broken table. “Now, shall we go over the reasons why you’re being an ass, again?” he asks me.

  “I already told you, nothing you can say to me is going to change anything.” I take a deep breath, trying to keep my temper. “Listen, SB, we’ve all been through an ordeal. I know what you must have suffered. You were out there a lot longer than I was. . . . ” The words feel as cloying as dust. “But you’ll see things clearly again when you—”

  “When we what?” he says bitterly. “What do we have to go back to? Nothing, unless we have this.” He points at the globe.

  “Have you considered honest work? I rather enjoy it, myself.”

  HK sneers. “You hypocrite. You wanted the estates for yourself. You think we don’t know that? The only reason you left home was because Father put you in your place.”

  I feel my face flush. “You mean I should have stayed, and helped you suck our ancestors’ blood?” I would have killed you first. My hands turn into fists. I force them open again. “That—that doesn’t matter now,” I say weakly. “It’s past, it’s gone. What matters is that we’re all the family we have left. This is stupid—”

  “Then why can’t we be rich again together?” HK says. “Why shouldn’t we? Isn’t there anything you want? There’s got to be something—something you want more than anything. Something you could never have, that you could have now—”

  Moon. Her face fills my mind. “Moon. . . . ” I realize what I have not had time to realize until now—that the impossible has been made possible . . . that to see her again is possible, because of Fire Lake.

  “You see?” SB says eagerly. “There is something! I knew you weren’t so fucking pure. You can have anything you want; we’ll share it, all of us—” Naked greed fills his face, and HK’s. “There’s more than enough.”

  “No,” I say flatly. “Never.” I realize there is nothing that could make me willing to give them that kind of power. “You don’t deserve it.”

  Their faces freeze. I glance at Song, still standing vacant-eyed beside me and gazing at the globe.

  “Then let me give you one more reason why you should do this our way, little brother,” SB says. He reaches into his ragged coat, and brings out the beamer. “Because you want to stay alive.”

  “Father of all our grandfathers!” I move forward angrily, not believing for a moment that he means it. “I’ve had enough of this shit, SB. Give me the globe, and the gun, damn it.” I hold out my hand.

  SB doesn’t falter, the gun stays steady in his hand.

  I stop, looking from his bleak stranger’s face to HK’s. HK looks down, staring at the globe. My empty hands clench. “Come on!” I almost laugh. “You aren’t going to use that gun. You aren’t going to kill a police officer. You aren’t going to kill a sibyl.” I hold up the trefoil. “Damn it, you aren’t going to murder your own brother—” I take another step.

  SB fires.

  Gundhalinu cursed softly, slumping back against the clear window-wall as the shock of betrayal doubled the agony of remembered pain. For a long moment he sat staring into the minutely familiar corners of his office, like an amnesiac who had suddenly recovered his memory. And at last he pushed himself stiffly to his feet, pressing his arm against his side as he made his way back to his desk. “Ossidge?”

  “Sir.” His sergeant’s voice answered him in less than a heartbeat.

  “I’m ready to see the prisoners now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat down in his chair, listened to his heart still pounding. The adrenaline was flowing again, with the memories. . . .

  The memory of his brothers standing over him as he lay, trying not to weep or moan, while they argued about whether to shoot him again. The memory of HK stealing the watch from his belt pouch before they abandoned him to die. . . . The memory of lying for hours on the floor while nameless, unspeakable things crept unseeing across his face; in too much pain even to move, but exquisitely conscious of every passing second, the blisters rising on his skin, the smell of charred flesh, his life’s blood spreading out in a shining lake around him. . . . Crying out for his brothers, for a passing stranger, for anyone in the universe but Song—

  Song, who stood staring down at him mindlessly, an empty vessel. He had begged her to get help, to find her mother, someone, anyone. But she went no farther than the door; and then returned, to stare down at him again with fathomless eyes, while the hours passed like years.

  Until at last he heard a voice calling Song’s name; and like a miracle or a hallucination, her face was transformed into the face of her mother. “Hahn,” he had gasped out, once, twice; so afraid that she would think he was already dead, and leave him there. . . .

  “Gedda!” Hahn cringed away from him, her face stricken—looked at her daughter, back at him, her hands fluttering in the air. “Song! Song—?”

  Song’s face
reappeared, suddenly alive with fury, her eyes spilling over with tears. She began to scream at her mother, incoherent accusations and protests. Her voice was an endless outpouring of desolation, sweeping away her mother’s words of rising grief and anger. They struggled, hands flailing—fell into each other’s arms, weeping, while his vision slowly filled with blood, and they became the voices of ghosts, as he was already a ghost to them.

  When he opened his eyes again it was to the perfect whiteness of fields of snow . . . until his vision slowly cleared, and he knew the whiteness for a hospital trauma tank. Somehow they had brought him help, after all . . . though he knew from the silvery cocoon that surrounded him how close he had come to not needing it.

  And then he had remembered why, and known what he had to do. He had dragged himself free of the life support, like a dead man rising from a coffin; bringing medical technicians on the run. He remembered them staring at him in laughable disbelief as he demanded the time of day, and then a comm link, and an identity scan—

  He had proved his right to be obeyed, in the name of Hegemonic security. He had watched through a fog of pain and drugs as the staff obeyed, deferred, acted on his orders, all the while stealing glances at the readouts above his head. Their expressions told him they didn’t know how he was even able to function.

  He functioned because he had no choice, enduring drugs and pain as he had learned to endure the Lake. And slowly he came to realize that they obeyed him not out of loyalty to the Hegemony, but because of the trefoil they had found around his neck. Knowledge was the one true and lasting power. . . .

  Gundhalinu felt for the trefoil resting against the smooth fabric of his uniform. Knowledge. He knew now, really knew, what it meant to be a sibyl. Not a saint, not a god . . . only a vessel. Only human. He clutched the pendant in his fist, remembering the moment when he had first put it on; his hand tightened, until he felt the barbs wound his palm again. Droplets of blood crept down his wrist into his sleeve. It was nothing like what he had imagined. . . .

  A light blinked on his terminal, and he touched the board. The door to his office opened. Ossidge led the two prisoners into the room. Their faces were still obscured by security bubbles; they had been held incommunicado for nearly four weeks. They had been cut off competely from contact with the outside world from the moment of their arrest, on his orders. He had called it a matter of high Hegemonic security, blocking all their civil rights. He had been justified.

  Ossidge stood waiting.

  “You can remove their restraints, Ossidge. I’m going to interrogate them off the record.”

  “That’s not regulation, Inspector.” Ossidge stood like a lump of granite.

  “This is an extremely . . . sensitive matter, Ossidge.” The inspector who once would not have tolerated the smallest infraction leaned forward across his desk, willing Ossidge to yield—

  Ossidge nodded. “All right, Inspector. Because it’s you who’s asking. I wouldn’t do it normally, but since it’s you ...” He released the prisoners. He started for the door.

  “Thank you, Ossidge,” Gundhalinu murmured, surprised, until he remembered why the note of near-awe hung in his sergeant’s voice.

  Ossidge turned, “I just want to say something, Inspector I think it’s a rare piece, how you’ve come back to the force . . . I mean, considering you’re about the biggest hero—”

  “This is the only place I want to be, right now,” Gundhalinu said gently, cutting him off. “This uniform feels better than it has for a long time.” He smiled, but it was not the smile he would have liked.

  Ossidge smiled, too, for the first time that Gundhalinu could remember. He saluted, and left the room.

  Gundhalinu waited as the two prisoners slowly removed their helmets. He saw their faces clearly for the first time, and they saw his. Their faces registered a play of emotions so extreme that it almost struck him funny.

  “You—?” “BZ!” The voices of his brothers merged into a cacophony of disbelief.

  He sat motionless behind his desk, saying nothing. They looked like the brothers he remembered, again—clean, healed, civilized even though they wore prison coveralls. But he no longer trusted his eyes. “Hello, HK . . . SB.”

  HK dropped to his knees in front of the desk. “BZ, by all our ancestors, I never meant for it to happen! Thank the gods you’re alive—” He covered his face with his hands. “I don’t understand . . . I don’t understand what happened.”

  “The hell you didn’t,” SB muttered. “You were counting credits right up to the moment the Blues picked us up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” HK shook his head, looked up at his brother, scowling.

  Gundhalinu got up from his chair, grimacing slightly as his side hurt him. He moved around the desk and put out his hands to pull HK up.

  HK climbed to his feet—leaped back with a yelp of fear as he saw the blood on his skin, blood from his brother’s hand.

  Gundhalinu shook his head, smiling faintly. “You aren’t contaminated.”

  HK rubbed his arm against the leg of his coveralls, but the stain did not disappear.

  Gundhalinu leaned heavily against the desk edge, trying to catch SB’s gaze.

  SB looked down. “If you’re waiting for excuses, I don’t have any.”

  Gundhalinu sighed. “No, brother. That’s not what I was waiting for.”

  SB’s head came up slightly, but he only said, “I tried to kill you. I thought you were dead.”

  “I was close enough.” His hand pressed his side.

  “What happened?”

  He almost thought his brother sounded aggrieved. “The powerpack was nearly out of charge.” Irony pulled his mouth up. “World’s End had the last laugh, after all. . . . Song’s mother found me. Song showed her where I was.”

  “Song?” HK said stupidly. “But I thought she was—”

  “They’re mind-linked somehow, by the Transfer. She can make her mother share what she sees—” He broke off, as the memory of his time in the abandoned room blurred the present. “Hahn got me to a hospital. And I sent the order to have you arrested before you could get back to Foursgate and start blackmailing the Hegemony.” It all sounds so simple. Like a lie. He watched his brothers’ faces tighten and close.

  “What did you do with the stardrive?” SB asked, finally.

  “Just what I said I’d do. I turned the sample over to the Chief Justice, along with a full report.” He could barely even remember the circumstances, anymore. After his coded call to the Chief Inspector, they had come to World’s End and taken him back to Foursgate, into a hell of reconstructive surgery and questions, rehabilitative therapy and questions, interviews and interrogations and questions, questions, questions. . . . “My hypothesis has been confirmed.”

  Their faces turned as desolate as the wastes of World’s End. “And what did it get you?” SB said bitterly, looking around the room. “Nothing.”

  “On the contrary.” Gundhalinu smiled. “You didn’t hear the sergeant—I’m quite a hero. They can’t do enough for me. They’re about to promote me to commander. I expect I could have just about anything I asked for, at this point.” And maybe I knew it would happen this way all along. He watched their faces, and felt his smile turn to iron. And that was why I could never let you be a part of it.

  “Then, why don’t you take it?” HK said. “You said there were things you wanted. You’re just like we are!”

  “No,” Gundhalinu said softly, “I’m not. But you’re right, there are things I want. I’ve already gotten one or two of them. But most of the things I want just aren’t that simple. They take time.” And planning, and patience. . . . And the certainty that he could change the web of other people’s manipulation that was already tightening around him; that he could make it into a ladder, leading him ever upward toward his goal.

  “What about us?” SB asked.

  Gundhalinu looked back at them almost absently. He folded his arms across his aching chest. “Well, I thought
about charging you with attempted murder, and maybe treason.”

  “But we’re your bro—!” HK bit his lips, his freckles crimsoning.

  “‘Blood is thicker than water’?” Gundhalinu smiled again, a rictus. “I know. I’ve seen a lot of my own lately.”

  “You still owe us something.” SB sat down in a chair, his eyes glittering. “You’d never have gotten out of Sanctuary alive without us. . . . You never would have gone there in the first place.”

  “Maybe not.” Gundhalinu shifted his weight against the hard edge of the desk. “It’s a question without an answer, SB. Just like the question of what sort of justice you really deserve. I know what the law would say. But I also know . . . ” He looked down at the blood drying on his palm. He raised his head again. “I know that no one comes out of World’s End unchanged. The only harm you’ve really done is to me. And I’m not the one to judge you.” He stared through them at the wall. “I’ve made some arrangements.” He felt more than saw them stiffen. “Our family holdings are being returned—to me.” “Little enough to ask,” they had told him; not knowing. . . . “By the time you get back to Kharemough you’ll have a home to go back to. You’ll have a sufficient annual allowance to let you live very comfortably. It will be supervised by someone else, of course.”

  “Thank you, BZ. It’s more than we deserve. . . . We’ll . . . we’ll . . . ” HK fumbled with the fastening of his coveralls. SB said nothing. Gundhalinu pushed away from the desk. “Get up, SB. I never said you could sit down.” He watched his brother rise from the chair. SB stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, imperceptibly; his mouth pulled back in a sardonic smile. “I guess you have changed.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Gundhalinu folded his arms, holding his side. “If either of you ever attempts to alter the arrangements I’ve set up, you’ll both be stripped of all class rights and completely disinherited. If either of you ever attempts to profit further from the discovery of the stardrive—if either of you ever makes public any claim at all—I’ll have you on trial for charges you never even dreamed of.” He pointed toward the desk terminal. “I’ll be following you to Kharemough, soon enough. Your records will always be on file, wherever I go. Don’t ever think I won’t be able to find you. Or that I’ll ever forget what you did to me.”