Joan Vinge - World's End

Hegemony is unjust, to make him react. She helps him repair a piece of the 78

WORLD S END

stolen equipment that the nomads bring to him; and it is not her hands working alongside his own, but her calm belief in his competence that makes him succeed.

And she tells him about the lover who left her when she became a sibyl; how she has searched for him ever since, even though she knows he loves someone else-- Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt queen of Winter.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Moon's clone, her own mother, her opposition in a game of fate played out by the unpredictable, omniscient sibyl machinery. . . . But she knows nothing of that, now. She only knows that her obsession has brought her to this place; just as his own failures have brought him here.

She asks him, finally, about the half-healed wounds on his wrists. But when he tells her what they mean, he sees nothing in her eyes except a profound knowledge of shared pain. He realizes with a kind of wonder that to her he is not his father's son. He is not a highborn Kharemoughi disgraced beyond enduring. He is not a failed suicide, a weakling, a coward.

Reflected in her eyes at last he sees the man he has always longed to be

... a quiet, intelligent, capable man, a man who serves the law, a man who has shown her only gentleness and respect. An honorable man.

She believes in him; she believes the future that her sibyl visions have shown to her still exists, for both of them. And suddenly all that matters to him is that he is no longer alone. He takes her into his arms, holding her briefly, chastely, only for a moment; filled with a gratitude too profound for words.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

And as he tries to let her go, she clings to him, murmuring, "No, not yet. Hold me, just for now.

. . ."

He is afraid, as suddenly he knows that he was afraid all along, that if he felt her body so close to him he would never let her go. But he takes her in his arms 79

JOAN D. VINGE

Page 64

again, sheltering her, answering her need; knowing all the while that it is another man's arms she longs to feel around her.

And as he realizes that even his love is hopeless, he realizes how much he loves her, has always loved her, will love her until he dies. The code that controls his life, that has told him his life is no longer worth living, would have forbidden this love he feels for a barbarian girl as pale as moonlight. ... But her reality makes his Truth as transparent as a lie; she makes his scars invisible.

His

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

arms tighten around her; bittersweet longing and desire are all he knows, and all he needs to know.

With a kind of amazement he feels her heartbeat quicken, answering his own. . . .

And then it ends. It always ends. Because it was never real, goddamn it! It was always a dream--even while it was happening. It could never have lasted. Her life was becoming a part of history, and I was nothing but a footnote. I knew it then, in my mind if not my heart.

That's why I left her. . . .

Then, why did leaving Tiamat leave me so empty--?

And when she disappears, why does it leave me so afraid?

The fear spills over into the daytime, until I have to blink my eyes to separate salt and sand from snow.

. . . Spadrin's eyes are not the color of the sky. Ang's eyes are as black as jet, and as impenetrable.

Are we his partners, or his pawns? What really goes on in his mind?

How could he have spent so long out here, and not have been affected somehow by this place . .

. ? He eats and sleeps and stares off into the distance with his lenses as

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

if he's alone.

Song's eyes stare into my soul, night after night.

... A sibyl found me once, in the wilderness, and saved me. And now a sibyl calls to me, Come to Fire Lake . . . find me . . . save me. Save me--

So

WORLD S END

I ... What the hell am I saying? I'm tired. . . . I'm just tired, that's all.

Where are my brothers, goddamn them .. . ? What did

Page 65

I do with their picture?

81

day 48

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

padrin did it intentionally. I know he did. He told

Ang it was an accident, and Ang pretends to believe him . . . what else? But I know they're both liars.

I had to work on the rover again today, a little past noon. Something had ripped or come loose underneath the vehicle, and the cab began to overheat. Before long it was worse inside the rover than outside. We had to stop; I had to work on it.

We were passing the foot of a scarp at the time. We all got out; Spadrin and Ang headed for the narrow strip of shade below the cliff face. They slipped and clattered through piles of what I thought was detritus from the slope. But when I followed, I found the piles were really heaps of bleached bones. I looked up the face of the scarp; its rim was like the serrated edge of a knife against the sky, fifty meters above our heads. "Ang?" I asked.

"What happened here? These bones . . ." I'd scarcely seen a living creature larger than an insect since we'd left the mountains. Ang had said most desert creatures were nocturnal, but I could as easily believe they were simply nonexistent.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Ang settled on an outcrop of sandstone, picking desultorily through the bones with something that might have been a femur. The bones seemed to be from a lot of different species. I wondered how long it had taken for such a monument of death to accumulate here. He 82

WORLD S END

shrugged. "Sometimes it happens out here. Things just go crazy--throw themselves off a cliff, run themselves to death; whole mobs of them. There are other boneyards like this. . . . This one used to be farther north." He shrugged again, as if living in a topologist's nightmare was perfectly natural.

"Why?" I said. "Why do they go mad?" Even as I asked, I thought that maybe he'd already answered me.

"Nobody knows why. Nobody cares, except the bugs." He pointed with his jaw, and I saw the Page 66

line of

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

half-meter hummocks that lay baking like loaves of bread in the sun near the rover. Deathwatch beetles-- carrion eaters, the funeral attendants of the waste.

Ang had said they gather around a dying creature, waiting until it's helpless, but not necessarily dead. . . . Like

Spadrin, I thought.

Spadrin was kicking a clear space in the shade with noisy disgust. He sat down, opening a bottle of liquor, and squinted up at me. "Get to work, Tech. It's hot out here."

I put on my sun helmet and took a long drink of water.

Then I went back to the rover and crawled under its front end, shouldering bones and rocks out of my way.

The rover's body absorbed the desert heat and reradiated it. My shirt was soaked with perspiration immediately, and my head began to throb. I hoped I could finish the repairs before I passed out.

Spadrin turned on his receiver; it was picking up some entertainment broadcast on inescapable satellite feed all the way from Foursgate. Strident, insipid music rolled incongruously from the scarp and evaporated into the silence of the desert. Minutes passed like days, but at last I was able to patch the gutted cooling system back together.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Ang," I called, "check the cab, will you? Turn on the cooler."