Joan Vinge - World's End

. . . full of dreams. She never had any dreams. She never understood about being a sibyl. It was only a job to her.

She let the Company use her and give us nothing. She was a sibyl, she could have asked for anything! But she wouldn't go somewhere where we could be rich and honored. She wouldn't listen to us--"

"Sibyls aren't supposed to want money or power," I say weakly, but she isn't listening.

"She didn't understand when I told her to infect me!

She knew I was lying ... but she did it anyway. And now she's sorry, but it's too late, too late. . . ."

She wrings her hands. I realize finally that it wasn't World's End that drove her mad, but her madness that drove her into

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World's End.

Did mine? I climb slowly to my feet, staring out the window at the Lake. "I hate my brothers," I say thickly.

"I don't know why I came . . . except that maybe I hated myself more." I turn back to her. "All my life, I always tried to do the right thing--but it always came out wrong." I'd been as self-deluded as any of the others back in C'uarr's place, the ones I'd despised for running away into World's End.

But this doesn 't have to be the end of the world. "We can leave 176

WORLD S END

here, Song. Nothing's keeping us here. Tell me how to find my brothers--"

"You'll never leave here. Not unless you ask the right questions!"

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"How?" I wave my arms. "What else can I try?"

She only stares at me, her face darkening. She gets to her feet suddenly and goes into the bedchamber with the globe in her hands. After a little I hear her call out the window to someone. I follow her into the other room.

She stands before an ornate mirror, holding a pot of red paint in her hands. She has put on the white shift I

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saw her wearing the day I came here, the day I saw the

Lake kill the men on the platform. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, I see that the shoulder and neckline of the shift are torn; I remember that I was the one who tore them. I look away self-consciously as she glances at me. "What else is there to try?" I ask her reflection.

"You'll see," she says, gazing through me. She dips her fingers into the bright liquid, drawing swirls and lines across her face. I remember the patterning she wore when I saw her on the platform. I look down at the faded patterns on my own arms; finally I know how they got there.

I hear the tower door burst open, and heavy footsteps cross the floor of the next room.

Suddenly Goldbeard is

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standing in the doorway. He looks from Song to me with morbid eagerness. "Him?" he asks, his hands flexing.

"Now, Song?"

Song draws a leisurely line of red down her bare arm, and smiles. "Just hold him," she says softly.

I stand frozen, too stunned by the unexpectedness of this to do anything at all. Goldbeard moves behind me;

his huge hands circle my throat and tighten. My own hands fly up in reflex, prying at his fingers.

"Don't," Song says. "Don't move, and he won't hurt you." She goes on calmly painting herself.

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My hands drop, and the pressure on my throat eases.

I take a deep breath, trying not to think. Fear leaves my mind too clear. Song comes toward me, carrying the pot of paint. She dips her fingers into the liquid again. She

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draws a line down my cheek, and then another. Is this all? I wonder dimly. But the paint has an oddly familiar consistency ... a faintly nauseating odor. The color-- A trickle of red drips onto the corner of my Up, and I lick at it with my tongue. A salty sweetness fills my mouth.

Blood. I spit and gag, knocking Song's reddened hand away. Goldbeard's thick fingers close like a band of iron around my throat, crushing my windpipe until my ears sing, until my vision blurs and my knees buckle under me . . . and I stop struggling.

He holds me on my feet, letting me breathe again in ragged gasps, while Song smears me lovingly with blood.

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She repaints my face, my arms, my chest with dripping arabesques; I flinch like a wild animal every time she touches me. "Why--?" I say.

But she only answers, again, "You'll see." She picks up her red/gold cloak and puts it on. She goes out of the tower; Goldbeard follows her, dragging me along.

Guards surround us as we reach the bottom of the steps, the canopy bearers materialize to shelter Song from the heat.

Song leads the procession down through her subjects

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and her ghosts and the morning shadows, as oblivious to one as to another. Goldbeard tosses out handfuls of coins, at her order, and people begin to follow us.

She takes the path along the canyon rim that leads to the fatal platform at the cliff's edge. A straggling mass of humanity trails us out across the plateau. When I realize where we are going I try to turn back, but Gold beard and the guards surround me . . .

and as we go on, farther and farther, an alien excitement begins to rise in me, overpowering my dread.

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We reach the platform at last; I see it up ahead, hovering on the crest of that bloodred wave of stone. In my memory it is a wonder, a place of magic, hung with silken pennants. But what waits for me now is only a shabby raft of flotsam and faded rags.

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We climb the trembling rope ladder--only Song and

I, this time. Fire Lake is alive below me, murmuring, changing; mesmerizing. I feel my willpower dripping from me like sweat, until I cannot even be afraid. We stand together above the crowd.

"The Lake . . . the Lake calls . . . the Lake will speak to you." Song's voice is thin and reedy as she speaks to the crowd. Misery shimmers in her eyes. But she begins to sway, lifting up her hands, rolling her eyes like a phony occultist. She is an actor, giving them the performance they are expecting. People in the crowd start to shout questions at her--random, inane, absurd questions.

I cover my ears with my hands.

Almost before I know it, she has gone into Transfer again. The questions stop, and she is answering . . . but her answers are as random and meaningless as the questions.

She speaks in languages that I know and ones I've never heard of, reciting fragments of conversation, obscure bits of data, questions, complaints. This is genuine, I know; even as I wonder how it can be. The crowd stands silent with awe, and some of them actually kneel down.

I feel the Lake's energy surge in the air around me.

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I thank the gods that there are no victims being offered up today, to be sacrificed to the terrible power she summons

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like a lightning rod.

Her possession goes on and on, agonizingly. My own mind grows heavy and dim; I stand gazing out at the surface of fire until my vision burns away and all I see are the phantoms that haunt my inner eye. The hot wind rising up the cliff face stuns me. I imagine myself melting, flowing down to meet the surface of the Lake. . . .

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Song breaks out of Transfer again, falls forward against the platform rail. The crowd's roar of appreciation startles me out of my daze. Song straightens away from the railing, pushing her hair back from her sweating face. She raises her hands again, gasping for breath, to shout, "Is there a judgment? Today the Lake will judge you--through him!" She points.