Joan Vinge - World's End

I grab HK again, shaking him, convulsed with laughter.

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"I really am, HK! It's going to be all right!" I realize that I am shouting into his cringing face, and try to control myself. I was right to believe in myself, right to go on struggling for my sanity, right to go on living-- Relief and pride fill me, and are all my own. / swear on my father's 187

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grave that I will never turn my back on the hard road again.

"HK, listen to me," I say, more evenly. He averts his eyes; I make him look at me. "Something's happened to me, and I don't really know how to deal with it, that's all. But I'm learning. I'm going to be all right. Somehow it was meant to happen." I'd never wanted to be a sibyl, never even imagined I was fit to try . . . but I am fit, I take

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the trefoil in my hands again, feeling its treacherous beauty, barbed with pain. Now, after all I've done . . . how is it possible? I swallow the choking tightness in my throat, suddenly remembering the moment when I swallowed the solii, just before Song infected me. "Do you know the truth yet?" she asked me; and said, when I shook my head, "You will."

HK sits watching me silently. I can't tell what he is thinking now.

"What about SB?" I look up, trying to convince us both that I am really thinking clearly. "Where is he? Is he all right?"

"All right?" HK's mouth twists. He scratches under his rags. I try to remember a time in our youth when I

even saw him perspire. "SB is as all right as anyone here.

He's a tool." His voice turns bitter.

"What's that?"

"A slave with special privileges. Anubah trusts him

. . . and he knows enough about the equipment to make himself useful." HK's hands tighten into fists.

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"What about you? You studied at the Rislanne--"

"I barely know how to use a terminal!" He glares at me. "You know that; you were always pointing it out to me. Do you really think Techs are born smarter than everyone else? Do you really still believe we were on top because we deserved to be?"

"No." I glance down at my wrists, and shake my head.

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"I'm not crazy anymore."

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HK gets up. "You were crazy to come here," he says.

"Yes." I watch the water move. "I know."

"I have to get back." He picks up two pails and fills them clumsily at the river's edge. Somehow the water lies obediently inside the buckets. He stands looking back at me. "If you want SB, I'll take you to him." He

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starts away, limping. I catch up with him and take the buckets as we begin to climb the path. He leans heavily on my shoulder, until I can hardly keep my balance. My own feet leave a bloody trail behind us.

"HK," I say, "I'm going to get us out of here."

He looks at me bleakly. "Don't say that. Nobody ever gets out of here."

"We will," I promise. But the Lake stirs inside me, and suddenly I know that I will never leave this place alive, I will never be really free or in control of myself again

--unless I solve the mystery that lives in my head, answer the riddle, ask the right questions. . . .

"You see?" HK mutters. "You know it too."

I don't answer. We reach the top of the cliff, panting and giddy from the pitiless heat, and start into the town.

I try not to flinch as ghosts walk through me, hoping HK

doesn't notice. My own ghost... I did see myself, safe and sane, in the future. All in blue. The way I saw my mother, in the past, in red. Song in red; my brothers in blue. As if I saw my own memories made into

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ghosts. . . .

But how can I remember things that haven't happened yet? How can I believe such a thing, how can I know that they aren't simply delusions? My confidence crumbles. They're consistent! my mind insists. Past and future are always consistent colors-- Why? And what about the rest of the ghosts--whose memories are they?

Those things mean something together, they are too familiar. I stop in my tracks. The Lake turned blue. As I

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slipped into Transfer there on Song's stage, I thought I

saw Fire Lake changing from red to blue.... Time dilation. The visual effects are like the changing colors of space seen from a ship approaching the speed of light. The universe shifted toward blue ahead, shifted red behind.

The color of whole galaxies approaching or receding from our own at near lightspeed, in the infinity of space.

. . . What does time look like from the other side?

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Paradox. I'm living inside a paradox, time is flowing both ways-- I feel ecstasy set fire to every nerve. --No, wait--

"BZ! Goddamn it--!"

I am sprawled on the ground; I realize that HK has pushed me down. I sit up, shaking my head. I am sitting in a puddle.

"You spilled the water!" he whines. "You spilled it all, damn you! Now I'll have to go back down...." He wipes his nose with his hand, mumbling.

I get up, wiping my hands on my pants, leaving rust red smears of grit. I can't understand why he is upset, when my own problem is so much greater. "I'm so dosel" My hands make fists. "I need a place to think and be quiet--" I look away, toward Song's tower.

"SB will kill me! You selfish . . . you spilled it. You go back and get more." HK waves his hand.

"What?" I blink at him.

"More water! SB wants it now. He'll--"

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I stare him down, disgusted. "Just take me to him.

He'll understand when he sees me."

HK's shoulders droop. He picks up the empty buckets and we go on through town. We reach the end of a wall that is half sheer rock; beyond it I see someone crouched in the scant shade of a doorway. I know who it is even before he raises his head.

"SB?" HK calls.

SB looks up. He wears a collar too. He has changed, but not as much as HK. He is clean-shaven; Page 151

the lines of

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his face are harder, sharper than they were. A livid scar marks his jaw. "Where the fuck have you been? What took you so long?" He gets to his feet, glaring.

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"Look, SB, look--" HK pushes me forward like a shield.

"Who are you?" SB asks, but he is already staring at me. He half frowns. "BZ--?" He reaches out to touch me. "I don't believe it. You look like shit, little brother."

He grins.

I nod, letting myself smile. "It's mutual."

"Ye gods," he whispers, as the realization registers.

"You came here after us."

I nod again.

"And you didn't bring an army, the Blues--?"

"No." I shrug. "I barely got here myself."

"Wonderful," he says sourly. "And you always said the Child Stealer gave HK's brains to some lowborn...."

He picks up the thing he was working on when he saw us--a restricted tightbeam hand weapon.

He tosses it at me; I catch it by reflex. "Here. I can't fix this--I've never even seen one before.

You do it."

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Old resentment twinges like a toothache, but I sit down and pick up his tools. "It's wonderful to see you too."

"What the hell do you expect? Are we supposed to be happy to see you trapped here like us? So we can all rot together?" SB looks up at HK again. "Where's the water?"