World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  I grind my fists on the dusty tiles of the entryway until the seizure passes. And then, fighting to keep control, I begin to practice the rituals that Moon taught me. I force myself to recognize how similar the disciplines are to the adhani, just as she said. Perhaps they even have a common origin. The familiarity calms me, and slowly I begin to believe that I can make them a part of me, a shield against the chaos that is loose in my mind.

  But as I let the belief take hold, a flood of irrational pleasure pours into me, sweeping everything away. “Moon!” I cry, “Moon—” I make myself remember the one person who still believes in me, the one person who still loves me. And blind passion becomes my love for her, genuine, measurable, real . . . a sea anchor, until reality resolidifies around me.

  I slump back against the pillar, drained. What use is it to practice the sibyl litanies—? I turn the trefoil over and over with uncertain hands. They may save me from the Transfer, but they can’t stop fits of manic depression from leaving my mind in ruins, every time I try to think rationally. And that is the difference between real sibyls and madmen. . . .

  Every time—My mind prods me with sudden excitement. Every time? Then the attacks fit a pattern. I murmur an adhani, searching for the strength to follow one more thought through to its end. It is even harder to force myself to look seriously at something as repugnant as my own insanity . . . but I know that every time I have moments of lucidity, or discover another clue about what has happened to me, I feel obscene pleasure. And when I fail I feel suicidally helpless. Rational responses wildly distorted, beyond my control . . . because something alien is controlling me. Something far stronger than I am; something that also causes phenomena only a sibyl can sense. Chaos incarnate is driving me crazy, like a question without an answer. But it wants me to win. It thinks I can. It rewards me with pleasure when I try, and punishes me when I fail. . . . operant conditioning.

  I start to laugh, certain that all of this is only my own pathetic paranoia. Lunatics always think they’re sane. . . . And yet, ever since Song infected me there has been an alien presence in my mind, wrapped around my thoughts like a brainprobe . . . always the strongest, the worst, when I see Fire Lake. Fire Lake. Can it possibly be alive . . . sentient?

  Exultation answers me. But how? Why? Some unknown life form . . . is it really possible? I get no response. Hope is real to me again, and with it, failure. But I know that whatever happens from now on I can only go forward, until I find the answer to this mystery, or die trying. I am a sibyl, and whether I am fit to be one or not, that change is inescapable, and permanent. And somehow it has bound me to Fire Lake. . . . I feel stronger in my new knowledge, and helplessly elated, and terrified.

  I get up, restless with nerves. My feet lead me through the town until I find myself standing at the edge of the canyon again. I wonder fleetingly why I always seem to find myself here, where there is nothing. The depths lie in black shadow, but I hear the water chuckling over secrets far below. Looking down from the brink I see a faint glimmer of light pulse and fade. I remember that once I saw something silvery in the water’s depths. Something about its shape was familiar . . . but there is nothing to see in the blackness. I look across at the quarter of the city that lies on the far rim, see it flickering with ghost-light, images winking in and out. There are no real people, no real lights there at all. The outlaws stay close to Song, under her protection. But why? Why does the Lake need her, or me? What does it mean—?

  I have too many pieces to a puzzle, and nothing to fit them into. I press my face into my hands, feeling my thoughts drown in noise. Moments of sanity are not enough. . . . Defeat weighs on me like iron. I’m tired . . . I’m so tired of trying.

  I go back to Song’s tower; not sure why, except that I have nowhere else to go. As I walk between the rows of bones I wonder suddenly whether she has ordered her guards to kill me. But I keep walking, and they let me pass. My tension grows as I climb the stairs to her chambers. The rooms are dark and silent. She is still lying on the bed, asleep now. The fire globe bathes her in dim, bloody light. She stirs as I enter the room, her face shadowed with exhaustion as deep as my own.

  “Why do you let me live?” I ask dully.

  “The Lake,” she says. “The Lake needs you.” She lets her head fall back again, lying passive and inviting on the silk and velvet coverings. “And I need you.”

  I lie down fully clothed—on the floor, where I will not even have to touch her. She murmurs a curse, and then is silent. I feel nothing but a cold knot of anger, and an aching loneliness.

  When I wake again it is dawn. The town looks like burnished copper. I have been dreaming about my brothers; the memory jars me fully awake. Song is sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up, staring at me. I try to question her about my brothers, but she won’t listen. She gets up and runs from the room.

  Sitting on the floor, I realize that my body no longer hurts anywhere. I have healed overnight. Overnight? I feel only a passing dismay at the vagaries of time. I stretch without hurting for the first time in . . . longer than I can remember, and I am only grateful. I scratch at the sparse stubble of beard on my chin.

  The Lake calls me to the window, and I look out at it. I watch it mutate and flow as it changes randomly, helplessly. . . . Helplessly. How do I know that? My hands make fists on the stone windowsill. I shut my eyes, reciting an adhani and feeling the demon choir inside me fade; listening for the darker voice hidden beneath them, the voice that I thought was my own madness—the voice of the Lake. I open my eyes, taking a deep breath, ready to try again.

  How does this thing get into my mind? As I ask myself the question, I realize there can only be one answer: Because I’m a sibyl, like Song. But what is the mechanism? I force my thoughts into the chains of question and answer. If I can only understand this, I’ll know better whether I’m really insane—whether I can ever be sane again. The virus causes altered brain structure, receptivity to a faster-than-light medium . . . my excitement rises . . . which means . . . which means . . . ?

  “Shit!” I push myself away from the window as my concentration falls apart and the thing inside me gibbers its frustration. “Damn it! Damn, damn—” not even sure if the curses are my own.

  Song cries out in the next room, as if she feels everything I do. I go into the room and she hurls a piece of clothing at me. “Get out! Get away from me, you failure, leave me alone!” Her voice is tremulous with pain, but her eyes are like obsidian. She clutches the fire globe against her breast.

  “I didn’t ask for this!” I snarl, sullen with exasperation. “I came here to find my brothers, not to solve your problems.”

  “Liar!” She stalks back and forth, her robe flapping open so that I glimpse a flash of breast or thigh as she moves. “You couldn’t wait to get your hands on me. You wanted me—everyone wants me, because I have power. They’d do anything to have me. But they’re all afraid of me except you.” Her hands touch her breasts; I look away. “You weren’t afraid . . . I thought you were different. But you’re not the man who came here—”

  “What do you want from me?” I shout furiously. “You infected me! You wanted a crazy man, and that’s what you’ve got! Tell me what the bloody hell you—” I break off.

  Her eyes are glazing . . . she has gone into Transfer.

  “Song?” I stare at her. For a moment I can’t even remember what question I’ve asked. And who have I called to answer it—

  “Help . . . me,” she whispers. “I want . . . help me. Order me.”

  The Lake roars into my mind, her voice echoes inside me, until I can barely speak. “Order—you to do—what? Who are you? Where are you?”

  “Lost . . . ” she moans. (Lost lost lost.) “Save me. . . . ”

  “Damn it—” I dig my fists into my eyes until I see stars. I know this is important, desperately important. But the Lake is all around me. “The Lake? Are you a prisoner of the Lake?”

  “No . . . Lake. Here.”

  “Where? What—
” I try to think. “What are you?”

  “Lake. Lake.” (Lake lake lake . . . )

  My breath catches. The Lake is speaking to me, through Song. “But what are you?” I shout, shouting down the echoes inside my head.

  “Your servant . . . Lake.” Song’s eyes are vacant, helpless.

  I turn away, shaking my head, wanting to shake her. “How can I help you?”

  “Ask . . . ” she gasps, “ask the right questions.”

  What are you, what do you want from me, how can I help you—? “I can’t think of anything else!” And unspeakable anguish fills me.

  Song falls out of Transfer into a sobbing heap. “Please, please . . . !” she cries, as if her heart is breaking. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . bear it. Help me—”

  I fall on my knees beside her and take her in my arms, holding her against my heart, because her pain is mine, as bitter and unstoppable as tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . ” I groan, to her, to the raving monster that holds us captive. “I tried.” Seeing now that she is as much its prisoner as I am. “Why does it do this to you . . . to us? By all the gods, what does it want from us—tell me, Song!” I do shake her now, to make her listen.

  She looks at me in fear, as if she thinks she will fall into Transfer again. “Don’t!” I shout. She doesn’t. “It’s so alone—” Her voice trembles. “There’s no one else who hears it—not through a thousand years. So it keeps me here . . . I keep it here . . . ” She wipes at her eyes. “It’s lost in time. It needs . . . ” She caresses the fire globe that lies in her lap.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You were supposed to know! You’re supposed to . . . to know.”

  “Why? Why me? Why not—Goldbeard, or somebody else? Why not you?”

  “I can’t! Nobody can answer it; nobody knows what it wants, nobody knows what it is! . . . I’m lost. I can’t hold on to anything. It takes everything away from me . . . ” She clings to me, burying her face against my neck. Her whole body shudders. “It’s eating me alive.”

  “Gods. . . . ” I wipe my nose, sniveling with self-pity. I have failed again, failed miserably, and I don’t even know at what. Why me? What do I know that matters? I’m no one— “I thought . . . I thought you controlled the Lake. I thought you knew what it was! I saw you with those men, you called up a power and you killed them—”

  “The Lake killed them!” She pushes away from me. “It took them somewhere else. It touches the crowd through me. When it comes that close, things happen. Things used to happen to Sanctuary all the time, that’s what everyone says. Until I came. Now they only happen when I can’t hold on, when I hate them so much. . . . ” Her hands clench. “I just never know what—”

  “Were those men guilty?”

  “I don’t know.” She looks at me strangely. Suddenly her fingers sink into my flesh. “I don’t care! They’re all guilty, those maggots! I suffer to save them—let them suffer too!” She begins to cry again, bruising her fists against my vest.

  “Help me find my brothers,” I say softly. “I know they’re here. You even saw them, you passed judgment on them. Help me find them, and I’ll take you away from here.”

  “That’s not the answer!” Her eyes are like black glass again. “I know them, two Kharemoughis. They were worms, even the Lake didn’t want them. So I let Goldbeard sell them.”

  I straighten up. “Who owns them? Where can I find them?”

  “You don’t want to know. That’s not why you came. You don’t care about your family. Nobody does, it’s all a lie.”

  The words sink into my heart like a knife. “That’s not . . . that’s not true. My father . . . your mother—”

  “I hate my mother! She never understood anything. She made my father feel like nothing, because he was . . . full of dreams. She never had any dreams. She never understood about being a sibyl. It was only a job to her. She let the Company use her and give us nothing. She was a sibyl, she could have asked for anything! But she wouldn’t go somewhere where we could be rich and honored. She wouldn’t listen to us—”

  “Sibyls aren’t supposed to want money or power,” I say weakly, but she isn’t listening.

  “She didn’t understand when I told her to infect me! She knew I was lying . . . but she did it anyway. And now she’s sorry, but it’s too late, too late. . . . ” She wrings her hands. I realize finally that it wasn’t World’s End that drove her mad, but her madness that drove her into World’s End.

  Did mine? I climb slowly to my feet, staring out the window at the Lake. “I hate my brothers,” I say thickly. “I don’t know why I came . . . except that maybe I hated myself more.” I turn back to her. “All my life, I always tried to do the right thing—but it always came out wrong.” I’d been as self-deluded as any of the others back in C’uarr’s place, the ones I’d despised for running away into World’s End.

  But this doesn’t have to be the end of the world. “We can leave here, Song. Nothing’s keeping us here. Tell me how to find my brothers—”

  “You’ll never leave here. Not unless you ask the right questions!”

  “How?” I wave my arms. “What else can I try?”

  She only stares at me, her face darkening. She gets to her feet suddenly and goes into the bedchamber with the globe in her hands. After a little I hear her call out the window to someone. I follow her into the other room.

  She stands before an ornate mirror, holding a pot of red paint in her hands. She has put on the white shift I saw her wearing the day I came here, the day I saw the Lake kill the men on the platform. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, I see that the shoulder and neckline of the shift are torn; I remember that I was the one who tore them. I look away self-consciously as she glances at me. “What else is there to try?” I ask her reflection.

  “You’ll see,” she says, gazing through me. She dips her fingers into the bright liquid, drawing swirls and lines across her face. I remember the patterning she wore when I saw her on the platform. I look down at the faded patterns on my own arms; finally I know how they got there.

  I hear the tower door burst open, and heavy footsteps cross the floor of the next room. Suddenly Goldbeard is standing in the doorway. He looks from Song to me with morbid eagerness. “Him?” he asks, his hands flexing. “Now, Song?”

  Song draws a leisurely line of red down her bare arm, and smiles. “Just hold him,” she says softly.

  I stand frozen, too stunned by the unexpectedness of this to do anything at all. Goldbeard moves behind me; his huge hands circle my throat and tighten. My own hands fly up in reflex, prying at his fingers.

  “Don’t,” Song says. “Don’t move, and he won’t hurt you.” She goes on calmly painting herself.

  My hands drop, and the pressure on my throat eases. I take a deep breath, trying not to think. Fear leaves my mind too clear. Song comes toward me, carrying the pot of paint. She dips her fingers into the liquid again. She draws a line down my cheek, and then another. Is this all? I wonder dimly. But the paint has an oddly familiar consistency . . . a faintly nauseating odor. The color—A trickle of red drips onto the corner of my lip, and I lick at it with my tongue. A salty sweetness fills my mouth.

  Blood. I spit and gag, knocking Song’s reddened hand away. Goldbeard’s thick fingers close like a band of iron around my throat, crushing my windpipe until my ears sing, until my vision blurs and my knees buckle under me . . . and I stop struggling.

  He holds me on my feet, letting me breathe again in ragged gasps, while Song smears me lovingly with blood. She repaints my face, my arms, my chest with dripping arabesques; I flinch like a wild animal every time she touches me. “Why—?” I say.

  But she only answers, again, “You’ll see.” She picks up her red/gold cloak and puts it on. She goes out of the tower; Goldbeard follows her, dragging me along. Guards surround us as we reach the bottom of the steps, the canopy bearers materialize to shelter Song from the heat.

  Song leads the procession down through he
r subjects and her ghosts and the morning shadows, as oblivious to one as to another. Goldbeard tosses out handfuls of coins, at her order, and people begin to follow us.

  She takes the path along the canyon rim that leads to the fatal platform at the cliff’s edge. A straggling mass of humanity trails us out across the plateau. When I realize where we are going I try to turn back, but Goldbeard and the guards surround me . . . and as we go on, farther and farther, an alien excitement begins to rise in me, overpowering my dread.

  We reach the platform at last; I see it up ahead, hovering on the crest of that bloodred wave of stone. In my memory it is a wonder, a place of magic, hung with silken pennants. But what waits for me now is only a shabby raft of flotsam and faded rags.

  We climb the trembling rope ladder—only Song and I, this time. Fire Lake is alive below me, murmuring, changing; mesmerizing. I feel my willpower dripping from me like sweat, until I cannot even be afraid. We stand together above the crowd.

  “The Lake . . . the Lake calls . . . the Lake will speak to you.” Song’s voice is thin and reedy as she speaks to the crowd. Misery shimmers in her eyes. But she begins to sway, lifting up her hands, rolling her eyes like a phony occultist. She is an actor, giving them the performance they are expecting. People in the crowd start to shout questions at her—random, inane, absurd questions. I cover my ears with my hands.

  Almost before I know it, she has gone into Transfer again. The questions stop, and she is answering . . . but her answers are as random and meaningless as the questions. She speaks in languages that I know and ones I’ve never heard of, reciting fragments of conversation, obscure bits of data, questions, complaints. This is genuine, I know; even as I wonder how it can be. The crowd stands silent with awe, and some of them actually kneel down. I feel the Lake’s energy surge in the air around me. I thank the gods that there are no victims being offered up today, to be sacrificed to the terrible power she summons like a lightning rod.