Joan Vinge - World's End

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city called Sanctuary, by Fire Lake. She's there."

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"It really exists?" I'd read about the lost city, the way I'd read of Fire Lake itself--as a thing shimmering on the edge of reality, lost in a haze of legend.

Supposedly it

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was a haven for criminals and degenerates fleeing from

Hegemonic law, who preyed on fortune-seekers who struck it lucky.

Hahn nodded again. "I've seen it, through her eyes, in

--in Transfer." There was a peculiar hesitation, as if she were leaving something unsaid. "All they say about

World's End is true: To stay there too long is to lose yourself forever." She glanced down.

I'd heard that radiation, or perhaps just the strangeness, caused physical and mental deterioration in people

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who spent too long out there. "Gone to Fire Lake" means

"gone crazy" on Number Four. I shook my head. "I don't know how I can help you. I've come to search for my brothers, and I don't even know how I'm going to do that. It will take all the time I have, and more, just to pick up their trail in that wasteland. I'm sorry, sibyl."

I was ashamed to look up at her, ashamed to refuse a sibyl anything, even though logically I had no reason for guilt. Sibyls are the speakers of the Old Empire's preserved wisdom, the selfless bearers of an artificial intelligence that moves them in strange ways. They say that it is "death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl. . . ."

The memory of another time still lay like cobweb across my mind's eye: the memory of another face, gazing up at me with eyes the color of moss-agate. The trefoil sign like a star on her ivory skin. The strength and wisdom that changed everyone she touched--

When I first met her I saw only an ignorant barbarian girl. But she was the child of a queen, about to become a queen in her own right ... a sibyl, already fated for a destiny far greater than my own. I was the one who had been unworthy.

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I forced my mind back into the present and watched

Hahn try to control her disappointment. After a moment

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she asked, "Do you have a picture of your brothers?

Perhaps I might have seen them somewhere around the town."

I pulled out the holo I carry with me and gave it to her.

"They look younger there. It's an old picture." Once it had been a picture of the three of us. I'd had my own image removed.

She studied it, and nodded. "Yes . . . yes. I did see them. I spoke to them about my daughter.

They were--" She glanced away, embarrassed.

I felt my face flush, as I imagined what SB's response

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must have been. "I apologize to you for their behavior, sibyl. They've brought enough shame on my family already to make the shades of our ancestors weep blood." I looked down, holding my scarred wrists against my sides.

"There's something more about them." She held the holo up, turning it in the light. "Yes . . . I've seen them since, somewhere else." She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration. "In Transfer ...

in Sanctuary."

Through her daughter's eyes, in the sibyl Transfer.

That was what she meant. A lead, I thought, a real lead, at last! I exhaled, realized then that I had been holding my breath. A part of my mind resisted, telling me that this was too easy, that she could be lying out of self-interest

--that even sibyls were human beings, not machines. I'd seen plenty of faces as open as hers hide every kind of lie. . . .

But it was the only clue I had, genuine or not. It was something, a place to start--the focus I so desperately needed for my search. Gratitude and hope shouted down my doubts; I felt my mouth relax into a smile for the first time in days. "Thank you," I said. "I'll go to Fire Lake, I'll find the city. I'll look for your daughter, and I'll bring her back to you if I can. ..." I glanced away selfconsciously.

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"Another sibyl--helped me, once. Maybe it's time I repaid my debt."

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"Does Ang know that you're searching for something besides treasure?" Hahn asked.

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I shook my head. "Not yet. He's a difficult man to talk to." It had seemed too awkward to try to explain the truth. I'd decided to wait for a better time.

"How will you get them to search for what you want to find?"

I laughed. "I'll worry about that after I get this damned thing running." I glanced at the rover, and back at her. "What about Ang, by the way?"

"What do you mean?"

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"You came to his place last night. You know him?"

"We only worked together." She suddenly looked defensive.

"I gave him assignments for years. I thought

... he promised that he'd help me, when he was free of the Company. He said it so many times.

But it isn't the

Company he's belonged to all these years, it's World's

End. World's End has poisoned him, just like--" Her mouth quivered. "Don't depend on him.

And don't let it happen to you. Whatever you do, don't lose yourself in World's End."

I smiled again. "I have no intention of it."

She looked at me strangely for a moment, before she reached into the soft beaded pouch that she wore at her belt. She brought out two objects and gave them to me.

One was a holo of a woman's face--her daughter, Song.

The other was the trefoil pendant of a sibyl, the ancient barbed-fishhook symbol of biological contamination that matched the tattoo at her throat. I'd never held a sibyl's pendant, and for some reason I was almost afraid to touch it now. I thought suddenly of the day, half a lifetime ago, when my father had sent me to one of the

Old Empire's choosing places. Just to stand before the

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place where some ancient automaton judged the suitability of the future's youth to become sibyls had paralyzed me. I had returned home without ever enter

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ing it, and told my father that I'd failed the test. . . .

Hahn stood waiting, still holding out the trefoil. I took it gingerly, let it dangle from its chain between my fingers. A sense of impropriety, almost of violation, filled me as I handled it. I had no right to possess such a thing.

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"You want me to have this? Why?"

"A talisman." She smiled, a little uncertainly. "And a proof. Show it to my daughter, when you find her. Then she'll know that you come from me." She gripped my hands suddenly. "Thank you," she whispered. "For whatever you do, thank you so much." Tears filled her eyes. "I love my daughter, Gedda, even if she can't believe

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it. I feel her suffering, every day, and I'm helpless to stop it. Why did I ever ..." She shut her eyes; tears ran down her cheeks.

"Why did she leave?" I asked, realizing suddenly that there was still more she hadn't told me.

But she only shook her head, turning away. "I don't know," she murmured. "Please help her--"

Her voice broke into sobs. She went quickly away from me, weeping uncontrollably, as if her relief at finding someone to take up her burden had left her defenseless against her grief.

I watched her until she was gone from sight, feeling a hard knot of unexpected emotion caught in my throat.