World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  We land easily on a flat slab of stone near the canyon’s edge. There are other flyers and rovers there already—I feel surprise when I see so many. I wonder dimly how many still belong to their original owners.

  I look over the canyon’s edge as we leave the rover. The water far below is as clear as crystal, and in its depths I see the red rock stained with cool, mossy greens. Where the canyons cross, something silvery catches the sun. The water undulates sinuously as it flows, and at first I can’t think why it looks so strange. Then I realize that the glistening water surface clings to the contours of the stone as it flows along the canyon bottom, defying gravity and all reason. The wonder and the beauty of it leave me astonished. When I wake up, I must remember this. . . .

  Goldbeard and his men lead me through the ruined town, along a rough path that follows the canyon’s rim. The heat is like something alive, riding my back. I stagger under its burden. The other quarters of the town dance and swim; they seem insubstantial as I look back at them across the chasm. I search for a familiar face, for any face—There is almost no living being anywhere. Only a few ragged, shuffling wretches pass us by, never looking up. Some wear chains. “Where is everyone?”

  “You’ll see,” one of the outlaws answers behind me. From somewhere in the distance I hear a wail of agony or madness. He pushes me to make me walk faster.

  Soon we have left the town behind, following the canyon toward the rim of the plateau. I begin to hear more voices in the distance. As we near the rim I see the gathering: Human forms waver in the heated air. A bizarre platform hung with gossamer flags floats above them; at first I think it is a mirage.

  But it isn’t. As we join the crowd at last I see the platform still adrift, hovering impossibly in the air above the cliff. Beside us the canyon ends, and the waterfall plunges over the scarp and down. Rainbows ride on the clouds of steam that billow up below us. Fire Lake is bright like the surface of the sun.

  On the silk-wreathed platform a strange pantomime is taking place. A woman stands there, cloaked in red/gold brocaded cloth that gleams in the sun. She is like a mirror reflecting fire, like a vision. Before her are three very mortal men, their hands bound behind them, roped together at the waist. They are arguing about something, denying some accusation, blaming each other. I realize finally that the shining woman is there to pass judgment on them, like a priestess, or a queen. The crowd watches, murmuring its anticipation, until the three men have finished their protests. Then, suddenly, Goldbeard shouts out, “What is the truth?”

  The shining woman lifts her arms and stiffens like someone going into a trance. Her voice rises eerily, filling the sudden silence that has fallen over the crowd. She speaks incoherently; her voice changes and changes again as it tries to contain a dozen other voices. At first nothing happens to the three men waiting before her. But then suddenly the distortion of the heated air around them seems to intensify; the crowd cries out in ecstasy and terror.

  Reality tears apart and re-forms around me, in a split second of gut-wrenching vertigo.

  A scream is echoing in my ears. My eyes are straining to see, although I don’t remember the instant when they didn’t see—the instant when the three men on the platform became one and a half.

  The man left alive stands motionless for a long moment, staring at the half a body still bound to his own. And then he sits down, jibbering. A stream of red spills over the platform’s edge.

  I watch in wonder as the possessed woman comes out of her trance and sways forward to the pennant wreathed railing. She clings there a moment, gazing down at the outcome of her judgment. Her mouth pulls back in a smile of terrible satisfaction. Somehow, using some power I cannot imagine, she has done this thing to them.

  She goes to the survivor and cuts him free with a knife. Then she straightens up again, shaking her fists in the air, and calls out in a trembling voice, “This is the truth!” The survivor half scrambles, half falls down the gossamer ladder that ties the platform to reality. He crawls away, disappearing into the crowd.

  The woman stands at the rail, searching the crowd with her eyes. . . . And then suddenly she has found me. She lowers her arm until it is pointing me out. It is as if she knew that I had come, as if she has staged this performance only for my sake: to show me her power. “Bring me the captive!” she calls. I see her face clearly at last, and I gasp.

  “She wants you,” Goldbeard says, almost resignedly. Of course she wants me. My heart leaps inside my empty chest. Goldbeard seizes my arm and pushes me forward through the crowd to the floating rope ladder, but now I am as eager as he is to reach the platform. Somehow I climb, and he follows me. The pain in my shoulder is nothing; even the Lake, lying below the trembling, swaying rungs of the fragile ladder, is nothing to me, when I know that my heart’s desire is waiting.

  And she is waiting—just as I remember her, just as I left her so long ago. But now she is the queen she was meant to be. Her hair falls around her like a shroud, white/black as the fields of snow, and I am snowblind with longing. Her face is patterned with an intricate filigree of red stains. The trefoil shines against her robes. Her eyes are like moss-agate and mist . . . when she looks at me my eyes cannot break her gaze. She stands motionless, holding me with her eyes for an endless moment. The awareness of her power, over these people, over me, leaves me shaken.

  Goldbeard plants a hand in the middle of my back. I stumble forward, slipping in the blood, and fall at her feet. I touch the dusty hem of her red/gold cloak. “Moon . . . ” I whisper. “I knew it would be you. I knew it.” I look up at her again, and her face fills with surprise.

  Goldbeard kicks the severed body off the platform behind me. “We found this garbage on the shore, Song.” He comes forward and pulls me to my feet; he makes her name into the name of a goddess when he speaks. “He say he’s come for you. Even had your picture.” She looks at him sharply, and back at me. “He’s a sibyl. You want him, or—?” There is a barb of jealousy in Goldbeard’s voice. I wonder if I will have to kill him.

  “You’re not afraid,” Moon murmurs, and reaches out to touch me, as if she cannot believe I’m real.

  “You’re not afraid of anything.” She traces the scar on my forehead. “Yes . . . oh, yes,” she says to Goldbeard. “I want him desperately. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment—” Her fingers feel cool and dry against my skin. She lets them wander down my cheek and across my lips. I kiss them hungrily; she pulls away. “I knew he would come someday. The Lake showed him to me. Someone who was not afraid; who knew the answer. . . . And he comes from my mother!” She gives a shrill laugh. Goldbeard looks at her blankly.

  Her restless hand falls to the trefoil hanging in the gap of my ragged shirt. “Sibyl. Then the Lake called you here?”

  I shake my head. “I came for you.”

  She frowns unexpectedly. “Do you wear this honestly?” Her eyes are too black as they stare into mine.

  I shake my head again, barely.

  Her hand tightens over the trefoil until the chain bites into my neck. “You will,” she whispers. Aloud, she says, “The Lake has chosen another servant! The Lake has shown me his coming. . . . I claim him for the Lake; for myself.” She holds my trefoil up so that it catches the light. The crowd rumbles with amazement. She looks back at Goldbeard. “Give me the solii you took from him.”

  Goldbeard stiffens. Slowly, reluctantly, he takes the stone from his pouch and hands it to her.

  She holds it up in the air for the crowd to see, turning it between her fingers. She presses it between her palms . . . and suddenly there is a large, sparkling gemstone in her hand instead. The crowd laughs and cheers. “Your reward.” She flips the gem to Goldbeard. He catches it. I watch greed and awe commingle on his face. “My Watchman,” she says almost tenderly, “you’ve brought me the right one at last—the one I’ve waited for, the one I prophesied to myself.”

  Goldbeard’s expression turns dark and uncertain. “He wants to take you away from us!”
he says. The crowd’s voice echoes his suspicion ominously.

  “I will never leave you,” she says calmly, to him, to the watchers. “I can never leave the Lake.”

  “Then what you want with him?” Goldbeard’s eyes are hot with anger. She stares at him. He looks down, glances at the Lake with fear on his face.

  She turns back to the crowd. “This speaking is over!” She raises her hands and claps them. The red/gold cloak drops from her shoulders, to lie in a puddle of blood. It is lined with black. She wears only a thin, white shift beneath it; the shift clings to her sweating body, concealing nothing. I suck in a breath of furnace-hot air. The crowd mutters and shouts its disappointment. They call out for something more, they want her to show them proof of what I am . . . they want more miracles, or more blood. But she ignores them. She ignores me, too, as if my gaze does not burn her flesh where it touches her.

  “I will return to the tower,” she tells Goldbeard. “Bring him.”

  She goes down the ladder as lightly as a ghost. Figures materialize, bearing a canopy to shade her as she walks.

  I want to go after her. Goldbeard knows it; he holds his gun on me. He holds me back until she grows small in the distance, following the canyon’s edge . . . until I am ready to throw myself over the rail to keep from losing her. “Nobody goes with her,” he says. “You only go to her.” He lets me leave the platform at last as she disappears from sight; his men are still waiting below. They watch me even more darkly as they take me back to town.

  We cross endless plazas piled with rubble, climb shallow steps chipped into the rockface and hot shining ladders. I climb awkwardly, using one hand. There are towers rising above the maze of tumbled structures; round ones, square ones, two or three stories high, with tiny windows that stare like skeleton eyes. This place is old, older than memory. We come to a tower whose middle story is now a slab of red stone. The path to its base shines with beaten metal. A fence of bones beckons us, a human skull leers above two human guards lounging against the wall at the foot of the steps that circle it. I feel as if I know this place; that it can only belong to her, only be what I’ve been moving toward, all this time. . . . “Our time has come,” I whisper. Goldbeard glances back at me.

  We stand beneath the skull’s empty gaze as the guards come forward to challenge us. They wear a grotesque parody of armor; one of them is a huge woman nearly two meters tall. The other has a pot jammed onto his head. I laugh, and they glare at me with death in their eyes. Goldbeard mutters to them in a language I don’t know, and they back away from me suddenly. They let me pass, and Goldbeard with me. We leave his men behind again.

  Oh gods, oh gods, this is the way of return. It is all I can do to keep from running as we climb the stairs. Soon. Soon. Every second is an eternity passing, every step closes the gap of time. We circle the tower of stone, pass through a heavy metal door into the chamber at its top. A breath of cool air greets us. I run my hands self-consciously over my filthy clothing: I am to appear before a queen. It is cold in the chamber, as cold as the frozen wastelands of Tiamat, and I begin to shiver.

  Moon rises from a massive carven seat filled with rich rugs and pillows: a queen’s throne. She holds out her hands. I start toward her, but Goldbeard jerks me back.

  “Let him go!” she orders. “He is the Lake’s chosen. You are not to harm him.” Goldbeard lets me go, angrily. “Leave us,” she says. As Goldbeard goes to the door with heavy reluctance, she calls, “We are not to be disturbed!”

  We are alone. I am trembling now from the urge to take her, to feel her body—I lift my hands, drop them again.

  She glances at me, licking her lips, as if she knows exactly what I want. She touches my trefoil. “The fishhooks—the bait.” Her fingers slip downward to my belt and toy with the catch. “No one ever touches me. It’s been so long. . . . ”

  I feel my erection pressing painfully against my pants. My hands make fists. No! I’m not an animal—! some dying thing inside me cries.

  She smiles at me—a strange, guarded smile, not one that I have ever seen on her face before. “Why did you come? Why is it you, after so many . . . ?” Her eyes seem all pupil, all-knowing.

  “I had to,” I murmur. “You know I had to.”

  “Yes.” She nods. “I know. Tell me who you are.”

  “BZ,” I say desperately, searching her face for a sign. “BZ, Moon, Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinu! Have I changed so much?”

  She looks my ragged, bloodstained body up and down with gentle amusement. “Tell me who I am?”

  “Moon! Moon, for gods’ sakes, don’t—You found me in the wilderness, you saved me. You gave me back my life . . . you made me forget my scars.” I hold out my wrists to her. “And then I left you to him! To that polluted weakling you thought you loved. I thought it was right; I thought I had to obey the code, and do what was honorable. Fuck honor! I’m free . . . nothing means anything anymore; nothing but what I want. Nothing will come between us this time, not even time. This time I’ll have you forever—” I pull her into my arms, covering her mouth with my own.

  She struggles in surprise, pushing me away. Her eyes are alive with an emotion that at first I mistake for rage. She turns away from me with a curse, clenching her hands, shaking her head. Her shining hair absorbs all light. I take a deep breath and then another, trying to force my body to obey me.

  Her shoulders loosen; she breathes calmly and easily again. She opens her hand as she turns back to me. The uncut solii is lying in it. I blink and smile. She closes her hand, opens it. The stone is perfectly cut and polished. It glows with secret fire. “They say it has powers of enlightenment,” she says. “Swallow it, false sibyl. Make it a part of you.”

  I cannot refuse her. I raise it to my lips hesitantly, put it into my mouth. I feel saliva gather on my parched tongue; the stone is smooth and pleasant, and it slides down my throat like water.

  She nods. “Do you see me differently now? Do you know the truth yet?”

  I shake my head.

  “You will.”

  She seizes my arm and leads me wordlessly into another room, to a bed piled with fragrant perfumed pillows. I fall across it; my legs are too weak to hold me up any longer. The room is a storehouse of strange and wonderful things heaped all around the walls; I gaze around me until my eyes blur, trying to separate one bit of color from another.

  On a table by the bedside is a solitary globe filled with restless, molten light. I reach out to it, hypnotized; but just as I begin to feel its heat she brings a flagon of flowery brandy and presses it to my lips. I drink it all.

  She sits beside me, watching me, waiting “Who am I now?”

  I shake my head. “Moon.”

  “Where did you get the trefoil?”

  I turn it over in my hands. I try to remember. “It was given to me. . . . ”

  “A woman gave it to you. A sibyl. My mother. I know everything she does.” She looks away toward the narrow window slit. The sky is blindingly blue beyond the walls, bright/dark, like her hair. “Did she tell you I’m crazy?”

  I remember. I nod.

  “That’s what she thinks. I see through her eyes and she sees through mine. And I hear the secrets of the universe. The Lake tells me everything. . . . ” Moon’s eyes glaze as if she is hearing them now. “Did she tell you why I’m this way?”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s her fault. I wanted to be a sibyl, like her. I went to the choosing place. . . . I was judged, and refused!” She pulls painfully at her hair. “But my mother infected me anyway—” She is seeing me again; her eyes are on fire with hatred. “And now she wants me to stop tormenting her. ‘Death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl!’” She beats on me with her fists. “She sent you to me, you come from her!” Her nails rake my cheek. “But I’ll make you the Lake’s. I’ll show her—”

  I catch her wrists in my hands, force her back and down across the bed. I fall on top of her, ignoring the pain, blind to everything
but her face as I cover it with kisses. She fights me wildly as I hold her prisoner, pressing my body down on hers. “Don’t!” I gasp. “Don’t, you’re Moon, I love you—”

  She has opened her mouth to bite me, to infect me—She takes a deep, sobbing breath instead, staring back into my eyes. And then her eyes fill with tears. “I love you!” she shrieks, as if she hates me. “I hate you—” she cries, as if she loves me. “I love you. . . .” And she is not seeing me at all, as her eyes close and her mouth finds mine hungrily.

  I rip at her clothes and my own until there is nothing against our flesh but each other’s flesh. Her whole body is dyed with intricate designs. Her hands still punish me, flailing, raking my back; fury and desire are joined inside her the way I want to feel her body joined with mine. Her soft, open lips burn my cracked and broken ones with hot kisses; her tongue enters my mouth. And when her hand finds the throbbing life below my belly she seizes it with fierce urgency.

  I moan. My hand fondles her breast, while the other lies buried between her legs, parting them as I probe the liquid depths of her secret places. Her body bucks and heaves, urging, demanding, as if there is no time . . . but I know there is all the time in the world now. Our time has come; everything will be right again for us—

  We roll, struggling, tangling, absorbing and exploring each other until there are no secrets left. Her mouth travels down my body, licking away sweat and grime, devouring me, as she forces my face away from hers—down, down, until it is buried in her moist warmth and I taste the bitter sweetness of her. Her body rises like a wave, cresting, breaking, and ecstasy bursts out of her like a scream of pain . . . another . . . and another.

  And then, gasping, she seizes my manhood. Her nails are buried tormentingly in my flesh as she pulls me over on top of her. I feel my aching hardness slide into the wet folds; I thrust fiercely, burying myself deep inside her. She wraps her legs around me and I plunge ever deeper into her darkness. I thrust harder and faster, driven by the need to obliterate all memory.