World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  SB glared. “That’s blackmail.”

  “I prefer to think of it as the spirit of the law, as opposed to the letter.” Gundhalinu shrugged. He turned, reaching across his desk to summon the guard. The door to the office opened, and a patrolman entered. “You have your orders?”

  The patrolman nodded.

  “And you have yours.” He looked at his brothers for the last time. And then he turned his back on them, staring out at the rain until they were gone.

  When he turned back again, he was almost disappointed that he did not find the ghost of his father waiting. Fire Lake had only made his ghosts visible; they had been real, and he had been living with them, all of his life.

  He sat down in his seat again, propping his head in his hands. “Well, there, Father, it’s done. Have I laid you to rest at last?” The silvery music of the antique watch filled his ears. He looked up; he shook his head slowly, leaning back in the chair.

  He held the watch in his hand. The past is always with us; even if it’s in ruins. He sighed. He had obeyed his father’s final wish, and the taste in his mouth was gall. His father had been weak, rigid . . . human. Not any kind of a god. The act itself was as meaningless to him now as the value system that made it necessary. He looked down at his wrists. The smooth brown skin still bore a faint pinkish cast left by the cosmetic surgery. He touched his forehead, another scar smoothed over, and pushed restlessly to his feet.

  The window was waiting for him, covered with tears. He went to it, and pressed his throbbing hand against its cold comfort. Looking out, he saw the Pantheon illuminated by a rare shaft of late-afternoon sun. He wondered whether the crowds would take it for an omen.

  Meaningless—the ceremony tonight, all the rest of it; only the ornaments of vanity disguising the naked body of the truth: An overeducated madman with a death wish had stumbled on the secret of Fire Lake. They say it takes one to know one. He shook his head.

  He had changed everything by unraveling the secret of the Lake, by giving the stardrive back to the Hegemony. In the weeks since it had happened he had barely had time to realize how much.

  But he had had enough time to realize the obvious—that not all the changes would be good ones. Kharemough already dominated the Hegemony, and it would be Kharemough that had the technology to fully exploit the stardrive. He knew that his homeworld ruled benignly, sharing its power with the rest of the Hegemony’s worlds, only because interstellar distances forced it to. Once Kharemough had had New Empire dreams . . . the Prime Minister and his Assembly still traveled from world to world, a harmless reminder of that past. How long would it take before Kharemough, with its technocratic and human arrogance, remembered those dreams and began to turn its new starships into warships?

  No time at all. He had heard enough high officials on the force discussing the possibilities with the Hegemony’s onplanet representatives already. And discussing the water of life, and a return to Tiamat. . . . Tiamat should have been far down on anyone’s list of important possibilities . . . except for the water of life. That rarity, that precious obscenity—few human beings could dream of tasting the immortality drug even once. But the ones who could afford it had enough power to make certain that it became available again. . . . Which meant that Tiamat would not have its century free from the Hegemony’s interference. That Moon—his Moon—would not be allowed to live out her life and her reign in peace, let alone be given time to guide her people toward an independent onworld economy.

  He touched the trefoil again, the dull stains at the point of each spine. The first, the only, thing he had thought of, when his brothers had asked him what he wanted most, was to return to Tiamat, to see Moon again. And he had realized then, in a moment of epiphany, that discovering the stardrive had given it to him.

  When the Hegemony left Tiamat, and when they returned again, the people there called it the Change . . . a time when anything became possible. His wish would bring the Change again . . . an untimely Change, the last Change. And the end of all possibilities for the people of Tiamat.

  And when he had realized that, he had known what he would be doing with the rest of his life. He would accept every undeserved honor given to him for his accidental heroism; take all of the prestige and influence that went with them—and make them work for Tiamat. He would finish what he had begun, on that world, in himself, so many years ago. He would make himself a hero—but not to the people who were honoring him today.

  And perhaps not even to the people he would be trying to save. He would see Moon again; he was sure of it now. But she would not be the woman he remembered . . . any more than he was the man she had known. Their love had been an aberration, born out of need. If he had stayed on Tiamat it would have melted away like the snow beneath the rising sun of summer. Their worlds, and their minds, had been too many light-years apart. He would have been as wrong to stay as he had been wrong to leave. . . .

  Another ghost laid to rest. He grimaced. When he returned to Tiamat—and he would, someday, as soon as it was physically possible to get there—it would be for far better, and saner, reasons than to search for a thing that had never existed. Moon was a queen now, and he was a hero. And both of them were sibyls. Sibyls aren’t supposed to want power. He thought of Song; how he had spoken those words to her, somewhere in a dream. She had wanted to be a sibyl because she had wanted power—and the power had destroyed her, just as the lore predicted. There were very few sibyls anywhere in the Hegemony in positions of real influence. And yet he had power now, and he wanted it . . . and so did Moon.

  But we didn’t ask for this. She had fought her own mother’s treachery to become queen—and yet he knew only her belief in the guidance, the sentient will, of the sibyl machinery had made her take the throne. She had believed that the sibyl machinery manipulated circumstance and her own actions toward an end that even she might never fully understand. He wondered whether she understood it now.

  He had been manipulated, too, in ways he had never expected . . . though whether it was by some hidden will or simply the hard hands of fate, he still had no idea. Had going mad made him fit to become a sibyl? . . . Or had becoming a sibyl driven him sane? Was it possible that he had not been merely a footnote, a victim of circumstance, on Tiamat after all? He would never know for certain, unless he returned to Tiamat again, and asked Moon the right questions. . . .

  He smiled, then—really smiled; but his mouth made an uncertain line as he remembered her ghost reaching out to him, hazed in blue. Laid to rest? . . . Oh, gods, he thought, is anything we ever do really done for the right reasons?

  He rubbed his eyes, looked out at the Pantheon—the home of all the gods—again. No one he really knew . . . no one who really knew him . . . would be there tonight. The people waiting there thought he was a hero. They thought he was brave, and brilliant, and honorable . . . they wanted to give him everything. They praised his modesty. If they only knew. His mouth turned down. But they never would—they’d never want to. They needed to believe that virtue was rewarded, that evil was punished, that order reigned. That it all had a point.

  And so did he. Once he had needed to believe it so much that it had driven him insane. . . . Until he had nearly died of his own guilt, never accepting that there were some things beyond anyone’s control. No one had the secret formula that would get him through a day, let alone a lifetime. Order and chaos maintained at best a fragile truce, and the universe hung in their balance. Someday, some millions of years from now, all the stars would flow out of the night sky into darkness. And then the hand of fate would turn the hourglass upside down, and they would all tumble back again. . . . Or maybe not. If I died today, what would anyone make of my life? He could live his life a day at a time, now, because he knew that in the end it was no one’s life but his own. And because even if it all came to nothing, at least he had made a knowing choice to act on the side of order.

  The first thing he would do was oversee the scientific expedition that was already forming to study F
ire Lake. They would need his unique and curious expertise, for a while. At least in that role he would not be a fraud. And at least he would be able to see that Song was taken care of. He had already arranged for Hahn to join the expedition, and to take Song with her. There would be a need for sibyls there for a long time, until the Lake was back where it belonged in starships, and at peace again. He owed Song that much, he supposed, even if it was no real answer for either of them. . . . His mind turned away from the memory of her face, which could have been his own. He would have to see her face again, soon enough—see it over and over, until it was only another face.

  After he was certain that suitable progress was being made at the Lake, he would go on to Kharemough. He would work to solidify his new position, gaining influence, making himself an indispensable part of the new interstellar technology. He would keep his Police Commandership, too, and build his power base from there. Whatever it took, whatever was needed. . . .

  He looked back again for a moment into the life that had brought him to this place, considered the ordeals that had prepared him for this future he had chosen, even as they had made it inevitable. They had seemed to him like the end of everything . . . and yet he had survived them all. None of them had been more than a prelude, a moment in time that had allowed him to begin the rest of his life.

  There would be no more self-inflicted wounds, no more hesitation, no more blind allegiance to rules made by human beings as imperfect as himself. He would survive anything that got in his way, because he knew he could. He would return to Tiamat, and together with Moon he would see that power passed into the right hands. Together they would start another future, they would set right old wrongs, they would— He caught himself smiling again like a lovestruck fool. He sighed. No . . . never for the right reasons.

  His intercom bleeped loudly in the silence “Inspector?”

  He turned back from the window, startled. His sudden movement swept the antique watch from the windowsill onto the floor His heel came down before he could stop it, crushing the gold case, the jeweled animal faces, the fragile works within

  He lifted his foot, crouched down, picking up the pieces as gently as though he were lifting an injured child. He placed the watch on the sill again, and stood over it, looking down. His mouth trembled

  “Inspector Gundhalinu? Sir, we ought to be leaving for the ceremony—”

  He began to laugh, and went on laughing, helplessly. What miracles we are, he thought, and what fools.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOAN D. VINGE reached the top of national bestseller lists in 1983 with The Return of the Jedi Storybook. Her novel The Snow Queen (1980) won the Hugo Award for the Best Science Fiction Novel, and established her as a major novelist. She lives in Chappaqua, New York, and maintains close ties to her home town, San Diego, California.