Joan Vinge - World's End

But I can give you enough to help you. There are word formulas for the channeling of stimuli, patterns that become a part of your thought processes in time, like--"

she breaks off, as the sibyl mind searches for a meaningful analogy, "the adhani discipline practiced on

Kharemough."

"Really? I practice that--"

"Use it, then. It will help you concentrate. But there are key words you need to make a part of it.

You know that there is a kind of ritual to the formal sibyl Transfer; it starts with the word input. No other questions need to be recognized. Learn to block casual questions by concentrating on the word stop."

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"Stop?" I say, incredulous. "That's all?"

"Yes. It's very simple; it has to be. But there's much more . . ." Her own words flow easily now, a clear stream.

I gaze into her eyes as I repeat every phrase, seeing

Song's face but knowing Moon's heart and mind lie behind it. The knowledge helps me focus on her words;

I am afraid to lose even one in the clamoring wilderness

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Song has made of my mind.

At last she has told me all that she can. ". . . it takes time. Believe in yourself. This is not a tragedy; it could be a blessing. Perhaps it was meant to be."

Never, I think, knowing the truth about what I have become. But I whisper, "Thank you." I touch Song's face again. Her eyes shine with tears. "You don't know what this means to me--" I take her hands in mine and kiss them. "I love you, Moon. I'll never love anyone else. I've hated myself ever since I left Tiamat." I take a deep breath. "I can tell you that now, because I know I'll never see you again." I try to see her as she must be--no longer a pale, stubborn barbarian girl, but a woman, a queen,

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the leader of her people. The once painful knowledge only makes me love her more.

Song blinks her eyes, and sudden tears run down her cheeks. "I need you," she cries, like the crying of sea birds. Her eyes begin to stare.

"Moon!" I clutch Song's shoulders, clutching at the spirit that inhabits her. My kiss smothers the last words that come to her lips: "No further analysis!"

Song sways; I catch her as she falls and lay her down on the bed. I straighten up again, still feeling the moist pressure of her lips against mine. "/ need you." Were those words really Moon's, or her own? She stares darkly at me, wiping her eyes, but she says nothing. I look away.

Twice now I have used her body to answer my need for

Moon. ... I tell myself angrily that I haven't used her half as badly as she has used me.

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I leave her alone in the tower and go out into Sanctuary.

The night is red with the Lake's unquiet glow. There are still many people moving through the ghosts in the levels of the ancient city, in the relative coolness of the night. I see lights in windows, and hear shouts and laughter and screams. Some of the lights are phantoms, and some of the voices echo inside me. I hear Spadrin's last scream, and I stumble against a wall, clinging to the rough stone.

I push myself away and move on, passing through ghosts, watching buildings melt and reform like mutating tissue inside clouds of ghost-light. It is almost as though I am looking through time, seeing Sanctuary's history unfold, superimposed on reality. I wonder how many people actually live here in the present, and how many of them are sane. ... I hold the trefoil briefly; let it fall against my chest again, touching it now and then with my fingers as I walk.

"So, pilgrim, did you get what you came for?" a voice asks me unexpectedly.

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The sudden question almost throws me into Transfer.

My mind stumbles and pulls itself together desperately. Stop! Stop! "Yes! . . . What?" I find myself staring up into

Goldbeard's mottled face. "What do you want?" I glare at him, because his expression fills me with cold fear. I

remember that he heard me tell Song I wasn't a sibyl. But 1 am a sibyl. . . . Slipping, slipping.

Concentrate! Stop. I

take deep breaths, mumbling an adhani; knowing that it's futile, but somehow succeeding anyway.

"I want what belongs to me--"

For a moment my floundering brain thinks he means the watch.

"--the solii."

I blink. "The . . . Song gave you your reward." I try to push past him, but he grabs my arm.

"A lousy diamond. Where's the solii?"

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I have to stop and remember. And then I tell him.

His jaw drops in moronic disbelief, snaps shut again with fury. "I'll spill your guts and find it, pilgrim--" He shakes me. "Only ..." He lets me go abruptly. "She says not to touch you. She says you belong to the Lake now."

He stares at me, as if he is seeing the sweat-streaked designs on my face for the first time.

I nod, eager to make him believe it.

"You hear the Lake talk?" he asks. "You see the future and the past?"

"Does . . . does she?"

"Sure." He nods, and I feel a giddy wash of relief. I was right. The ghosts, the buildings, are not hallucinations

. . . they're something else. . . . One less symptom, one more clue. "Do you see them?" I ask.

He laughs, and spits. "Nah. She's the sibyl, the one got power over the Lake. It has her, and it leaves us alone."

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"What do you mean?" The more I know about Song, the more I will know about what she has really done to me.

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He shrugs impatiently. "I told you. The Lake does crazy things. It sucks you up and spits you out some other time. It makes things change so you can't find them. Look around here--" He waves a hand, covering an arc of jumbled ruins. "Only here it's better now, since the Lake has her. She takes care of us." He strikes his chest with a huge hand. "And I take care of her. I get rid of anybody tries to do anything wrong with her." His eyes gleam with fanatical promise. "But she said let you alone . . . for now."

"What does it want with her?"

"You tell me!" he snorts. "You tell me, pilgrim. What does it want with you? What does she want with a limp

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one like you? Did she have you?" He stares me up and down, eyeing the painted whorls that cover my skin.

Echoes of lust and sudden shame burn inside me, fire and ice.

He reads the answer in my face, and his own face fills with sullen envy. His hands clench. Even he is afraid to touch her. . . . And now I recognize the real source of her power. Her magic is just a game; even her sibyl's blood is nothing but a symbol. All her power over them lies with the Lake, in her control over it. But Goldbeard doesn't understand the Lake's power any more than I do.

She said I'm the one who was supposed to understand. But I don't understand! I feel my concentration dissolving like bubbles in an undersea swell of futility.

There is someone else I need to ask Goldbeard about, something else I need to know. And he can tell me, if I can just hold on. . . .

By the time I recapture my drifting consciousness he is gone, and I am standing alone inside a crowd of rattling blue ghosts. They hover in the air; they seem to be doing something technical

... I can't find the strength to wonder what it is. I push through them as if they