Joan Vinge - World's End

She is pointing at me. "No!" I say. I try to run toward

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the ladder, but my feet turn me back again. My body belongs to the Lake now, not to me. I watch numbly as

Goldbeard forces someone up the ladder to stand before me--two men, frightened and angry.

They begin to argue, accusing each other: "He stole my slave--" "I won him fair--!"

I can't listen, I refuse to listen, searching for the strength to stop what Song is about to do to me.

I cover my ears with my hands again as she cries, "What is the truth?" But Goldbeard jerks my hands down and pins them behind me. The two men back away from us, staring.

"Leave me alone!" I throw myself forward, using the pain of my twisted arms; I shout a sibyl litany--anything, to stop my mind from unraveling like a thread as Song asks the question again and again. I shut my eyes against the sight of the Lake but it burns its way through my lids. No escape--

"What is the truth?"

I sway ... I feel myself letting go ... and suddenly far below me the Lake passes through a spectral shift-- red orangeyellowgreen blue.

I dissolve, flowing out into the Lake--not my body, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter,

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but my mind. I am bodiless, infinite, exploding and reforming, disintegrating and reborn; here, there, now, then; boiling with a million memories that have no common ground. Chain reaction without chains, atoms of meaning fissioning into randomness and perversity. I am 180

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amorphous sentience, helpless, haunted, raging . . . tortured by loss, by the need for a time that was or would be: For time flowing downstream, ordered, ruled, under control-- Control . . , control . . .

"Control!" I am shouting hysterically at the crowd.

"Control!" I reel forward to the fence, gasping like a drowned man. The crowd shouts in meaningless exhultation, while the Lake pours its maddening poison of frustration into me.

Why? Why? I realize that I have seen the very heart of the truth . . . and still I do not understand.

What does it mean, what does it mean--?

Then suddenly I remember the two men. I turn slowly, forcing my eyes to stay open. The two men are staring

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back at me, their own eyes glazed with fear--but they are alive, and whole. The Lake did not touch them.

Somehow I have protected them. Relief leaves me limp.

"Get out of here," I whisper, my voice breaking. They do.

I lean on the rail, stupefied and disoriented. When I

begin to care what is happening around me again, I see

Song waving her arms, flaunting herself, flaunting her control over the crowd. Claiming all that has happened as her own doing. The sight fills me with disgust. But she throws me a look of hidden rage and anguish; she knows that I still don't have the answer. She uses me, like she uses all of them . . . but she's still a victim, just like I am.

I have to escape from this place. I go to the ladder and start down it. Song makes no move to stop me. Even

Goldbeard seems to believe now that I'm possessed. I

wonder if I shouted the same meaningless gibberish that

Song did. ... I stop in midair, clinging to the rungs. I

know that I've heard those fragments of random speech before. I still hear them, inside my head: the ghost voices. Human voices. Why is it obsessed with humans? What could we possibly mean to something so alien? The Lake stirs, I

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feel its excitement expand inside me--I drop the last meter to the ground as I lose my grip on the ladder.

The mob backs away from me. I climb to my feet, and they make an opening to let me through.

They watch me nervously, as if they expect the sort of theatrics from me that they get from Song.

"Just stay away from me!" I

shout. They seem more than willing to obey.

I walk back to town along the canyon's rim, solitary among a crowd of ghosts. The plateau is like an anvil under the hammer of the heat. I wish I had a sun helmet

... I wish I had some shoes. I am barefoot--I only notice it now, as my bruised and bleeding feet stumble in the rocky path. But pain is almost a relief, by now, like hunger and thirst. Proof of my reality. I wonder how many performances like the one I just saw Song has put on for her subjects

. . . and how much choice she has.

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And how much chance do I have, caught between her and the Lake? I rub my sweating face with unsteady hands. I have entered the Lake's mind, the way it enters mine. I have touched the heart of chaos. . . .

And it longs for order. The realization throws my thoughts together like clapped hands. I was right all along. It does want me to fight for control. It wants me to

. . . to order it.

The Lake's elation screams inside me. I sink to my knees, fighting to hold my thoughts above water until it subsides. I get to my feet again, when I can, and go on.

How can I order the Lake? One human mind could never control a force so overpowering, even if it understood what it was controlling. And I don't even understand that. I look down into the purple-shadowed canyon, despairing

--and see the unnatural glint of something silver far below. Waiting. Waiting. ... I am back at the point where the canyons split. I stare down at the water, at the mystery lying in its depths. I don't understand why I am obsessed with this spot. Except that this thing is familiar,

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somehow. I've seen it before, somewhere. If I could only get close enough--

Suddenly I see--I know--where there is a narrow path that leads down the cliff face. My eyes spot Page 144

tiny figures moving along the path, far below. I reach the head of the trail, and start down it.

The others who walk the trail are mostly carrying water, and most of them wear rags and chains.

Captives from the wilderness. Slaves. I remember my brothers again suddenly, painfully. If they are still alive, this is what they are enduring. The slaves keep their heads down and avert their eyes when I look into their faces;

trying to make themselves invisible.

I start to question one man about my brothers, but his face is utterly empty. I let him pass and stop another. He cringes against the wall and whines. I feel the yielding

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hopelessness of his body under my hands . . . my hands tighten instinctively until he winces. His fear makes me feel my own power; I want to beat him until he tells me what I need to know--

I release him suddenly, as if he is burning hot, and run on down the trail. When I reach the bottom of the canyon

I fall on my knees at the river's edge and splash myself with water, scrubbing my body with sand until there are no bloodstains left on me. The water is ice cold; I bury my face in it and drink as though there is not enough water on the planet to quench my thirst.

Finally I get to my feet. I stand dripping at the water's edge and watch its undulating surface form impossible braids and patterns--defying gravity and my own need to see the river move like any river I have ever known.

I try to believe that the water will not suddenly break its invisible bonds and drown me. The water murmurs and whispers, but the air is dead around me; there are no echoes falling from the canyon walls. I am alone here now, except for ghosts. A ghost haloed in red is chipping 185