Gundhalinu had not been inside her home in nearly two years. It looked much as he remembered it, neat and modest, like its owner. The soft, modular furniture she had purchased after he had gotten her a job at the Project still looked almost new.
He set the container he had carried from the research center down on a low table in the middle of a scattering of uncollected dishes. He turned back, answering Hahn’s still-unspoken question. “I’ve brought you something. For Song.” He looked again at the box, away from her eyes. He unsealed its cover and took out a globe filled with coruscating fire.
He held it out to her, seeing the small frown of consternation return, furrowing between her brows. “What is it—?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“That’s stardrive plasma.” The answer did not come from him, but from Kullervo. Kullervo stared, his mouth hanging open with utter disbelief. “What the hell are you doing with that?”
“Returning it to its rightful owner,” Gundhalinu answered, sounding calmer than he felt.
“You mean you just walked out of the Research Project with that; we just walked out of there with it, together?”
Gundhalinu nodded.
“How is that possible?”
Gundhalinu smiled faintly. “I am the Director of the entire Project. I gave myself permission.”
“And the security systems listened to you?” Kullervo murmured. “Just like that?”
“Of course. I programmed them. No one else here was experienced enough with the new system.”
Kullervo shook his head. “I need to sit down.” He sat.
“Song—” Hahn said suddenly, looking past Gundhalinu; not calling a name, but acknowledging a presence. Gundhalinu turned, following her gaze, as Kullervo looked up from where he sat.
Song stood in the doorway to another room, motionless, with darkness behind her. A long, shapeless sleeprobe covered the painful thinness of her body; her heavy, midnight-black hair hung about her like a shroud. She stared at Kullervo, her mouth open. Slowly she put one hand up to her mouth, pressing it; pointing at him with the other as if she saw a ghost. Or maybe she really was seeing a ghost, Gundhalinu thought. He had seen enough of them himself, at Fire Lake. But her dark eyes moved away again, distractedly, until they met his own. They filled with something that might have been recognition, rejection, hatred … or nothing at all, before her gaze fell to the globe in his hands. Her expression slowly changed until he was sure that he was seeing wonder.
She came toward him, holding out her hands uncertainly, as if she was afraid of him, or of his refusal. He put the globe into her hands. She stroked it, held it close to her body; looked up at him, her eyes suddenly gleaming with tears. She half frowned, her quizzical expression making her look momentarily like her mother.
“Yes.” He nodded, making no move to touch her or the globe. She looked down at it again, almost as if she were listening with her eyes. He remembered that look; remembered that feeling. “Do you feel it? At peace…”
He thought that perhaps she nodded, a tiny spasm of her neck; but she did not look at him again. She turned away slowly, holding the globe close, and drifted like a spirit back through the doorway. The globe’s light filled the darkness beyond it with an eerie, momentary radiance.
Gundhalinu turned back to Hahn, ignoring Kullervo’s eloquent silence. “I’m leaving for World’s End tomorrow.”
“I know,” she said. “To test Dr. Kullervo’s viral reprogramming.”
“Yes, we—” He broke off. Of course; everyone knows. “I thought … whatever happens, whether we succeed or fail … in case something should happen to me, I wanted to give you this now. That’s stardrive plasma, in the globe.”
She nodded again.
“The transformation process was successful on every sample we tested here, including this one. I thought it might help, somehow.” He looked down.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“It’s the least I can do.” He looked up at her again, seeing her lined, weary face, the trefoil tattoo visible on her throat like the one at his own: the reminder that a sibyl was a sibyl even when the pendant on a chain was not there; day and night, waking and sleeping, eating, drinking, making love … every moment of one’s life. “I wish I knew how to do something more.”
She smiled in gratitude, but he saw a world of sorrow in it.
“I’d better be going.”
She hesitated, and he wasn’t sure whether the hesitation was because she wanted him to stay, or simply didn’t know how to talk to him anymore. She turned and led them to the door. “Good night,” she said, “and thank you again.”
He said, “Good night,” in turn, and Kullervo followed him out of the building into the street.
“Explain,” Kullervo said, catching him by the sleeve as they began to walk. “You just gave away one third of all the stardrive plasma you’ve been able to collect in over two years—on a whim?”
“No.…” Gundhalinu shook his head. “Hardly a whim.” He started back toward the center of town, taking Kullervo with him. “The amount of stardrive we’ve been able to contain and collect is far less than we need to make even one faster-than-light drive function. We can’t even get it to replicate. If what we do at Fire Lake is unsuccessful, that won’t change. If we are successful, it won’t matter.”
“But what’s stardrive plasma got to do with Hahn’s daughter?”
Gundhalinu was silent for a few steps more. They were nearing the corner of the street, and he gestured Kullervo into a seat at one of the tables of an outdoor tavern. Sitting outside at night had become a favorite pastime for workers from the Project, since sitting outside during the daytime was unbearable. The almost subliminal hum of the sonics employed everywhere to keep insects at bay made a soothing, white-noise counterpoint to conversation.
The tavernkeeper brought them a bowl of heavily salted carrod rinds and two beakers of water. Gundhalinu sipped at the lukewarm liquid, and thought that the tavernkeeper looked annoyed; thinking that he had no right to, since not even a beaker of water was free here—a tradition that still held from his first visit to this dismal town. It surprised him that Kullervo drank nothing stronger; but he had not seen anything that resembled a drug pass Kullervo’s lips since the night they met.
“But what’s that got to do with Hahn’s daughter?” Kullervo repeated, this time holding Gundhalinu’s gaze stubbornly. “What have they got on you?”
Gundhalinu laughed. “A hand around my heart, I suppose.” He shook his head, glancing away from the look on Kullervo’s face. “Nothing more. But the globe that contained the stardrive plasma—that’s an original, a relic. A stasis field capable of containing the stardrive harmlessly, without altering its properties, and yet it looks and feels like nothing so much as a ball of plass. I have all the specs on it—we understand it perfectly, in principle—but we have no way to manufacture anything like it … yet. Which is why we have to have the plasma’s willing cooperation.…”
“Damn it, I know all that. What’s that got to do with Hahn?” Kullervo insisted. “What’s it got to do with her crazy daughter?”
“It belongs to Song. It was the original sample of the stardrive plasma that I brought out of World’s End with me. She had it. I brought her out too, along with my brothers.… I went in to find them. That’s why I was there, in the first place.” It sounded like an excuse. He glanced at Kullervo, to see if he had noticed. “I met Hahn here in the town; she asked me if I would look for her daughter.”
“And you found all of them, out in that…?” Kullervo jerked his head in the vague direction of World’s End, as words failed him. “That’s harder to believe than that you found stardrive out there.”
“I suppose so,” Gundhalinu said, half smiling. “Although at the time I imagined that it would be simple.”
“‘The gods take care of fools’…” Kullervo murmured.
Gundhalinu grimaced. “Maybe so. As it turned out, by blind luck or other
wise we all ended up in the same place—a place called Sanctuary, by the Lake itself.”
“There’s a town out there?” Kullervo said in disbelief.
“There was. On an island of red rock in the middle of the Lake. It was built by the survivors of the ship that crashed there at the end of the Old Empire—the one the stardrive plasma escaped from. The gods only know what became of the original inhabitants. It was full of murderers and lunatics when I got there.…” His voice faded; he drank water, aware that Kullervo was looking at him strangely. “My brothers were prisoners there—slaves. Song was its queen.”
Kullervo laughed, a strangled sound that was more incredulous than amused.
“She was in communion with Fire Lake. She kept the people there protected, more or less, from its randomness.” Gundhalinu looked up, facing him directly again. Kullervo only nodded, showing no surprise now. “It was able to communicate with her, after a fashion, because she was a sibyl. I have a theory—”
“That all the forms of Old Empire technovirus still in existence have a single common denominator,” Kullervo said. “Their differences are simply a reflection of how they were programmed.”
Gundhalinu stared at him. “Exactly,” he said.
Kullervo laughed and nodded, his eyes shining. “You’re dead right, Gundhalinu-eshkrad.”
“You sound like you know that for certain.”
Kullervo shrugged and ate a rind. “What we’ve done here proves it … at least to me. I’ve been working on analyzing and charting the differences to a degree where we can predictably reprogram the basic substance for our own uses. What we’ve done, and are about to do, with the stardrive is a first step. The options are almost infinite. If only we could recreate the kind of precision they must have had…”
“If we’re successful at Fire Lake, we’ll have proof that more funding and more effort should go into your work when you return to Kharemough.”
Kullervo looked back at him blankly, as if the comment were a complete non sequitur; as if his own thoughts had drifted into alien country again. “Yes, I suppose so,” he murmured. He rubbed his arms, pushing his sleeves up toward his elbows.
Gundhalinu froze, staring at the profusion of colors and patterns that started at Kullervo’s wrists and went spiraling up his forearms. Tattooing. The only place he had ever seen tattooing like that was on the arms of criminals. He looked up again, found Kullervo staring back at him.
Kullervo’s long-fingered hands twitched, as if they wanted to pull his sleeves down; but he did not. “I got the tattoos on Samathe,” he said, “when I was … young.” He shrugged. “It’s not what you think.” He held out an arm so that Gundhalinu could see it clearly; see that the intricate geometric designs flowing one into another like music made visible were not the crude pictorials he had seen on underworld thugs. “I liked to look at them.…”
“They’re very beautiful,” Gundhalinu said softly. He was reminded of the fluid patterns of adhani. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Why do you keep them covered up?”
Kullervo studied the tattoos as if he were hypnotized; but Gundhalinu thought he saw the younger man flush. “So that everybody at the Project won’t look at me the way you just did.” Kullervo pulled his sleeves down again.
Gundhalinu watched the designs disappear, his embarrassment oddly mingled with regret. He said nothing more, waiting.
Kullervo’s attention returned to him abruptly; Gundhalinu read non sequitur again in Kullervo’s half frown. “If the Lake communicated in some fashion with Song, what about you?” Kullervo gestured at the trefoil he wore, as if there had been no discussion at all about tattooing a moment earlier.
Gundhalinu forced his mind to retune to Kullervo’s sudden change of frequency. He touched the trefoil absently, wonderingly; as he still did often, every day. “Yes. It communicated with me too. It forced me to think about it until I … understood.”
“What’s it really like out there—World’s End?” Kullervo twisted the ring he wore on his thumb; a ring of silver metal set with two soliis, that Gundhalinu realized suddenly was probably a wedding ring.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it.… Maybe it’s different for everyone who goes out there.” He lifted his hands. “Anyway, you’ll see for yourself, soon enough. Gods, look at the time. We’d better get some sleep before the night’s gone … if we can.” He smiled and lifted his beaker to Kullervo, for once feeling the kind of comfortable companionship with him that had been almost perversely missing from their relationship these past months. Kullervo raised his own mug, smiling wryly in return, and drained it. “I’ll share that ride home with you now,” Gundhalinu said.
Kullervo nodded, and used his remote to call a cab. He stood up, stretching, rubbing his neck. “Tell me,” he said, “do you still hear the Lake when you go out there?”
Gundhalinu hesitated, nodded. “I still hear it. And I still have some effect on it. Expeditions I head are … safer. But the Lake is—insane, for want of a better word. It flows in and out of our particular continuum at will, there’s no hard-and-fast reality around it. That’s why it’s been so damned difficult even to collect a sample.” He glanced up, as the cab they had ordered drifted down onto the street beside them. “Reede.…” Kullervo looked back at him. “When I’m around the Lake I—get a little disoriented sometimes. It’s hard to concentrate, there’s so much static in my head.” He took a deep breath, feeling himself flush as he went on, “I’m glad you’ll be with me on this trip. I’m glad I’ll have someone I can count on.”
Kullervo’s smile came back. “We need each other, on this trip.…” He looked down at his wedding ring; his smile quirked oddly. “You can count on that.”
NUMBER FOUR: World’s End
Reede settled back in his bed in the predawn blackness and sighed. He felt the water of death renewing him, relieving the loneliness and the fear, the countless almost subliminal sensations of discomfort that had been plucking at his nerve endings. It was the closest thing to a drug rush that he could experience anymore. He savored the monstrously deceptive sense of well-being it gave him, the sense that he could do anything, that World’s End itself was no match for his intelligence, and the human beings who so trustingly traveled into it with him were no match for his cunning. He closed his eyes, letting go as he felt sleep settle over him like a warm blanket.…
The call signal on his remote buzzed loudly in the soft, perfect silence, jarring him out of almost-oblivion. He swore and sat up, dazed, still half dreaming that he had rolled over on some gigantic insect in his sleep. He swore again as he realized where he was, and what the sound meant. By the time he had pushed himself off the bed he was wide awake, seeing dim light through the imperfections of the flimsy window opaquers. He ordered the lights on and groped for the remote lying on his bedside table.
“I’ll be right down,” he said, and shut it off before Niburu could reply. He pulled on the sturdy, lightweight tunic and pants, the heavy boots, that Gundhalinu had recommended he wear; locked his remote onto his utility belt, and put on the sun helmet he had become accustomed to wearing all the time. He picked up the bag which held everything personal that he owned—because one way or another he did not expect to return to this room—and went out the door without looking back.
Niburu and Ananke were waiting for him in the hired hovercraft. He checked their clothing with a cursory glance; gave their faces a longer look as he got in. They looked tired and nervous, as if they hadn’t slept much either, and that worrying about today—or tomorrow, or the next day—was what had kept them awake. “What’s bothering you?” he snapped, knowing he ought to feel the same way, but incapable of it when the drug had hold of him.
“Everything,” Niburu said glumly. Ananke said nothing, holding the quoll close, stroking its protuberant nose while it burbled mindlessly.
“Lighten up, for gods’ sakes,” Reede said, frowning.
“You mean, ‘it’s not the end
of the world’?” Niburu asked sarcastically. “Yes it is.”
Reede grunted, watching the Project and the town drift by below; wondering whether it was actually the prospect of going into the unpredictable wilderness that was bothering them, or the fear of what they might be forced to do in order to get out again. He did not ask, because he would not be able to give them an answer that would make them feel any better. He looked away from them, shifting restlessly in his seat.
Gundhalinu was, predictably, waiting for them when they arrived at the departure point. Beside him was the insectoid triphibian rover that would carry them all to their fate, and the floating sledge they would tow behind them, which would carry the bulk of their equipment. Reede shook his head and smiled; the smile he saw reflected in the window was not a pleasant one.
Niburu dropped them precisely onto the departure field. Reede climbed out, glancing toward the rover, where the two government troopers were still loading the last of their supplies aboard. Or one of them was, anyway—the kid, Trooper Saroon, or whatever his name was. The sergeant, Hundet, stood hands locked behind his back, watching the kid struggle with loads he probably could have moved one-handed; exerting effort only once, to curse and kick the kid’s butt when he dropped a crate.
Reede turned as Gundhalinu came up beside him. “Sergeant!” Gundhalinu said sharply, in Fourspeech. “Give Saroon a hand, not your foot, if you want things to go faster!”
Hundet looked back at him, and Reede saw the black resentment that filled the man’s eyes as he slowly and sullenly moved to pick up a piece of equipment. Hundet was the kind who wouldn’t forget a rebuke like that, ever. Reede didn’t bother to say the obvious, now that it was too late.
“Thank the gods we’re making this trip by air,” Gundhalinu murmured.
Reede raised his eyebrows. “Why in seven hells would you even consider doing it any other way?”
Gundhalinu shrugged, smiling faintly. “The first time I went into World’s End, we did it the hard way, in a broken-down junker with a defective repeller grid. We had to travel overland the whole godforsaken, hellish…” His voice faded; something came into his eyes that could never be put into words.
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