Joan Vinge - World's End

Until, after an eternity, I am reborn into my own body again, whimpering mindlessly. Song sits in her chair, watching me. "What are the one hundred major exports of Kharemough?" she asks.

/ don't know. And I am swept away again . . . this time to my homeworld, and with my own eyes I see the

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interior of the New Hall of the Republic. The famous

Ramosthenit frescoes, which my mother unearthed in the ruins of Old Dimmarh, are so close to me that I could touch them. But I am trapped in someone else's body, and I am paralyzed. I can only stare and stare in helpless longing as concerned hands, the hands of my people, reach out to me. . . .

I am back with Song. Before I can even speak she asks me another question, and I am wrenched down into utter blackness again.

The game goes on and on, as her words suck me out of myself and abandon me on other worlds, or alone in the Nothing Place. . . . Until at last she tires of the sport, and when I come to once more she rises from her seat and stands over my strengthless body. "You see, Mother?" she screams at no one. "You see, you see--?"

Weeping furiously, she runs from the room.

I lie clawing at the dusty rug, too exhausted to move.

Sleep covers me with its gentle blanket.

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Iwake to the choir of madness. I lie where I lay last night, curled fetally on the floor. Gods, gods.... I pray, but I know there will be no answer. "Religion is only our futile attempt to force order on chaos. " My mother told me that when I was a child. Now, at last, I understand.

Mother . . . Mama. . . . But I know there will be no answer. I bury my face in my hands, drawing my knees up tighter.

"BZ. . . ."

I open my eyes. I see my mother's sad, impatient face bending above me, hazed in red. She kisses my forehead and I am a child of five again. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "I have to leave you now.

... I have to go away."

I push myself up on my arms, frightened and confused, reaching out for her. "Why?" Asking the question that I have asked myself again and again through a lifetime. What did I do wrong?

She shakes her head, looking away from me. "Because

I can't live a lie instead of a life anymore. Try to understand.

... Be a good boy." She kisses me again, pulling

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away from my hands. "Good-bye." And then she leaves my room, and our home, forever.

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"Good-bye, Mother. ..." I whisper. And at last I understand.

I sit up slowly, feeling as though I have aged a hundred years. I look at my hands, expecting them to be withered and bent. But they are my own, the backs

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smooth and brown, scattered with pale freckles and stained with paint. My wrists are still scarred. I sigh, rubbing my aching shoulder. The pain in the abused joint is like hot needles, but I savor it. Yesterday when

I woke I could barely feel it ... yesterday when I woke

I could barely see or hear. Getting used to it, I think, hopefully.

But then I remember last night, the fresh wound that Song opened in my sanity. The Transfer . . .

the sibyl

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Transfer. Not some evil magic. I try to make myself believe it was only that. I know that sibyls are human computer ports, linked to a hidden data bank--the blackness, the heart of a machine--and to sibyls on other worlds. Predictable responses, my mind insists. Not insanity.

But real sibyls control the Transfer, they aren't lost every time someone asks a question!

Song enters the room. My hands fly up to cover my ears, and I listen with all my strength to the cacophony inside my head. Song's lips mock me as she drifts past, her sky-blue translucent outer robe trailing her like a cloud of lost souls. There is food on a silver tray by the door. She takes only a single piece of dried fruit and disappears down the steps.

I get up when she is gone. I watch from the tower window as she wanders away across the plaza, shaded beneath her canopy, trailed by guards. The people she passes bow and prostrate themselves to her; some offer her things that glitter in the sunlight. Someone gets too close to her, and suddenly Goldbeard is there, hurling him away. In the distance Fire Lake mutates restlessly and murmurs with ghosts. The moment I look at it I am possessed, lost for what seems like hours. . . .

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Finally I stagger away from the window, faint with hunger and exhaustion. I force myself to choke down what is left of Song's food, although the pointlessness of eating knots my stomach.

And then I go to her bed and fall across it, and sleep some more.

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WORLD S END

When I wake she is still gone. I have no idea what time it is. I wander in a daze through the empty, silent rooms of the tower. It surprises me that I am alone, that Song does not have servants surrounding her here like she does outside, to wait on her every need. Are they all so afraid of her? Or doesn 't she want her subjects that close to her? One of the rooms is a bathroom, and it actually functions. I

use it, unspeakably grateful for privacy and comfort.

Water actually flows from the cracked spout of the ornate tub. I splash myself, trying to clean the grime and painted patterns from my body; too tired to wonder how I came to be painted, or to care that all I do is make more

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tracks in the filth. I can't remember why it matters, anyway.

Shivering, I go back into the bedchamber. My clothes are still there, torn and stinking rags. I pull my pants on awkwardly; my clumsy body seems to belong to someone else. Only its pain belongs to me. I sigh as

I fasten the pants, hating the touch of the stiff, dirty cloth against my raw skin, and yet somehow comforted by it. There are other clothes, better ones, among the heaps of offerings piled up around the room.

There's one of everything ever made here, I think, and hear my own idiot laughter. Jewels, tools, odd pieces of furniture and broken equipment. I pick up a leather vest woven with gems and metal and put it on like protective armor.

But I see the Lake as I glance up, and it calls me. I go back to the window again. I stand watching helplessly, gaping into otherwhere, while the Lake turns my mind inside out.

Until suddenly a familiar tinkling chime unlocks the prison of my obsession. I turn distractedly, and see my belt lying across the bed. The silvery music stops abruptly, before its pattern is complete. I rush to the bed, fumbling open my pouch. All that is left inside it is my father's watch. I shake the watch with trembling hands, and listen as it finishes its chime. I kiss it.

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Time lives! Gravity still holds me to the planet's surface.

Somewhere in the universe electrons spin along in orderly subatomic paths, planets circle suns, galaxies spiral through the night. Pattern balances chaos. The knowledge fills me with triumph . .

. triumph overwhelms me, reflecting back and back in the mirrors of my insanity, until my thoughts fall to pieces.

I hold the watch up to my eyes, trying desperately to remember . . . "My brothers! I came here to find my brothers!" I shut my eyes, make myself see their faces; I rebuild my sense of purpose bit by bit out of broken fragments. . . .