Joan Vinge - World's End

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And when I open my eyes again they stand before me, ragged, hazed in blue. I can see the sky through their backs. "HK? SB? Where--where are you?" I ask, barely

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believing what I see. "Are you alive? Tell me where--"

"You can't be serious," SB sneers. "You're going iogive it away?"

He is not answering what I say, but the voice of some angry ghost inside my head. Shut up! I think furiously, trying to shout down my madness--realizing suddenly that the ghost voice I hear is my own.

But when I focus my eyes again I am alone, listening to the memory of a conversation with my brothers

. . . not the one I just had, but another one, that I know has never happened.

I get up from the bed, cursing in frustration, with the watch clutched in my hand. The room is an obstacle course of things Song has extorted from her worshipers.

I kick my way through silver dishes and dismantled terminals; walking in circles, forcing myself to pass the window again and again without looking out. And every time I do, the compulsion, the yearning, the need, to look out at Fire Lake leaves me weak. Somehow I am the Lake's victim, as much as I am Song's. "You belong to the Lake now." Everything she told me after she infected me

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must be true. I begin to believe the incredible evidence of my senses, even though I don't know how or why Fire

Lake has invaded my mind. I may be crazy, but the

Lake's power over me is real enough.

And if it is real, then somehow there has to be a way to break it. I go back to the bed and lie down again. I count, I calculate, I recite a dozen different alphabets out loud to keep my thoughts my own. The watch chimes, marking meaningless segments of time. Outside the window the sky darkens; the chamber fills with the glow of Song's fire globe. I begin to lose my voice, I begin to repeat myself. I try to picture Moon, the one person whose face I can still bear to see. I talk to her memory about the memories we share, trying to speak coherently

. . . until gradually her memory becomes so real to me that I do see her, reaching out to me, in a halo of blue light. I sit up, calling her name--

I wrench myself back miserably to the multiplication

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tables. I count on my fingers, as my diseased mind fights me like an addict's, wanting only to surrender to chaos, to flow out into the Lake's haunted dream world. Struggle is pointless, chaos whispers in my head. Pattern is an illusion, order is a lie, the universe is random. Suns die, worlds collide, life is an accident, meaningless and futile.

You are insane. You control nothing. . . .

"The periodic table of elements is not a lie!" I shout hoarsely, and refuse to listen. And as time crawls by I

feel my confidence returning, a little. / can hold on. It can't force me fo do anything I don't want to do. I'll learn to live with it, if I have to. Song does. But I know that I can only retain this much control by putting all my concentration into it. I

can't do that forever. It's only a matter of time. . . .

Despair fills me again.

And what about the rest? it cries. I'm infected! Every time I hear a question I can't answer, my mind goes out of my body. I can't live a sane life that way!

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JOAN D. VINGE

/ can learn to control it,

Only a sibyl can do that. I'm not a sibyl, I wasn't chosen, I'm not right for it! I'm not strong enough. (My legs tangle in bedding and I fall.) I can't!

How do I know? I've never tried.

"But I'm crazy--" I sit back on the floor, striking my knees with my fists.

Not as crazy as when I came here.

I watch, stupefied, as memories that could not possibly be mine flood my mind's eye. I remember my journey here; I remember its end. ... I saw the face of one woman on the body of another, and used her, like an animal. . . .

I murdered a man in cold blood.

"No! No, no ..." I hold my head, knowing that the memory of the bloody knife driving into his chest will

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explode out of my skull, that my heart will stop, that surely now damnation will swallow me up at last--

He killed Ang! He would have killed me! I had, I had to kill him--

But not like that. Not like that. The voices in my head wail a dirge--the voices of a thousand ancestors crying my shame, avenging furies that will torment me forever for my crime. I sink down again, embracing my punishment, and my guilt. I belong here after all. This is fitting.

And yet, some small, stubborn part of my mind insists that even my guilt proves I am no longer what I was.

That I am someone new, reborn. . . .

After a long time I am calm enough to remember where I am again. I hear someone enter the outer room.

From the light tread, I guess that it is Song. I stumble to my feet, sick with anticipation. How can I protect my mind from her--how can I control the Transfer?

Control the Transfer. I see half the answer, in a sudden flash of clear thought . . . and maybe more.

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Song appears in the doorway, her face burnished by

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the chamber's ruddy light. Before she can open her mouth I shout, "Question, sibyl! I have a question for the sibyl Moon Dawntreader Summer of Tiamat--" not knowing if I ask the impossible, not caring.

"No!" Song flings up her hands in protest. But her body goes rigid and her eyes glaze as the Transfer carries her away.

I move close to her, watching her pitilessly, straining for a sign of someone else's presence. Her eyelids flutter;

her eyes look at me, through me, all around me--back into my own. She gasps.

"Moon?" I murmur. "Moon, is it really you?" I brush Song's cheek uncertainly. I can't believe that I have really called her here to me.

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Song's body quivers, as if someone else longs to move it. "Yes . . ." she whispers. "BZ! How . . .

what do you

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. . . want of me? Please . . . give me more information."

It is all she can do, imprisoned in the Transfer's eye.

I try to focus my own addled thoughts, afraid that I will lose her-- "I'm . . . I'm here on Number Four, at a place called Fire Lake. I need help. Something gets into my head all the time, and . . ."

Rambling! Stop it! "I'm a sibyl, Moon! Someone infected me, the woman who sees me now for you. She wasn't meant to be a sibyl... she's out of her mind." I swallow painfully. "And I think ... I think I am too. I'm trapped here, I can't get help from anyone else. Tell me how you control the Transfer!

Every time I hear a question--"

"A sibyl. . . ." Song's voice reaches out to me, but it is Moon who fills the words with compassion. "Don't be afraid of the infection, BZ. It doesn't have to make you insane. Fear of it can be your worst enemy. I know you ... I know that--" Song's hands twitch--"that the finest, gentlest, kindest man I ever met must have been meant for this. That you must have been chosen, somehow. . . ." Song takes a deep breath. "It's difficult

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for everyone, at first. Complete understanding . . .

complete control of the process takes many months.