Joan Vinge - World's End

again. And he had realized then, in a moment of epiphany, that discovering the stardrive had given it to him.

When the Hegemony left Tiamat, and when they returned again, the people there called it the Change

... a time when anything became possible. His wish would bring the Change again ... an untimely Change, the last Change. And the end of all possibilities for the people of Tiamat.

And when he had realized that, he had known what he would be doing with the rest of his life.

He would accept every undeserved honor given to him for his accidental heroism; take all of the prestige and influence that went with them--and make them work for Tiamat.

He would finish what he had begun, on that world, in himself, so many years ago. He would make himself a hero--but not to the people who were honoring him today.

And perhaps not even to the people he would be trying to save. He would see Moon again; he was sure of

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WORLD S END

it now. But she would not be the woman he remembered

... any more than he was the man she had known. Their love had been an aberration, born out of need. If he had stayed on Tiamat it would have melted away like the snow beneath the rising sun of summer. Their worlds, and their minds, had been too many light-years apart.

He would have been as wrong to stay as he had been wrong to leave. . . .

Another ghost laid to rest. He grimaced. When he returned to Tiamat--and he would, someday, as soon as it was physically possible to get there--it would be for far better, and saner, reasons than to search for a thing that had never existed. Moon was a queen now, and he was a hero.

And both of them were sibyls. Sibyls aren't supposed to want power. He thought of Song; how he had spoken those words to her, somewhere in a dream. She had wanted to be a sibyl because she had wanted power --and the power had destroyed her, just as the lore predicted. There were very few sibyls anywhere in the

Hegemony in positions of real influence. And yet he had power now, and he wanted it ... and so did Moon.

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But we didn't ask for this. She had fought her own mother's treachery to become queen--and yet he knew only her belief in the guidance, the sentient will, of the sibyl machinery had made her take the throne. She had believed that the sibyl machinery manipulated circumstance and her Page 183

own actions toward an end that even she might never fully understand. He wondered whether she understood it now.

He had been manipulated, too, in ways he had never expected .. . though whether it was by some hidden will or simply the hard hands of fate, he still had no idea.

Had going mad made him fit to become a sibyl? ... Or had becoming a sibyl driven him sane?

Was it possible that he had not been merely a footnote, a victim of circumstance, on Tiamat after all? He would never know

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for certain, unless he returned to Tiamat again, and

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asked Moon the right questions. . . .

He smiled, then--really smiled; but his mouth made an uncertain line as he remembered her ghost reaching out to him, hazed in blue. Laid to rest? . . . Oh, gods, he thought, is anything we ever do really done for the right reasons?

He rubbed his eyes, looked out at the Pantheon--the home of all the gods--again. No one he really knew

... no one who really knew him . . . would be there tonight. The people waiting there thought he was a hero.

They thought he was brave, and brilliant, and honorable

... they wanted to give him everything. They praised his modesty. // they only knew. His mouth turned down. But they never would--they'd never want to. They needed to believe that virtue was rewarded, that evil was punished, that order reigned. That it all had a point.

And so did he. Once he had needed to believe it so much that it had driven him insane. . . . Until he had nearly died of his own guilt, never accepting that there were some things beyond anyone's control. No one had the secret formula that would get him through a day, let alone a lifetime.

Order and chaos maintained at best a fragile truce, and the universe hung in their balance.

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Someday, some millions of years from now, all the stars would flow out of the night sky into darkness. And then the hand of fate would turn the hourglass upside down, and they would all tumble back again.... Or maybe not. If I died today, what would anyone make of my life? He could live his life a day at a time, now, because he knew that in the end it was no one's life but his own. And because even if it all came to nothing, at least he had made a knowing choice to act on the side of order.

The first thing he would do was oversee the scientific expedition that was already forming to study Fire Lake.

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They would need his unique and curious expertise, for a while. At least in that role he would not be a fraud.

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And at least he would be able to see that Song was taken care of. He had already arranged for Hahn to join the expedition, and to take Song with her. There would be a need for sibyls there for a long time, until the

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Lakewas back where it belonged in starships, and at peace again. He owed Song that much, he supposed, even if it was no real answer for either of them. . . . His mind turned away from the memory of her face, which could have been his own. He would have to see her face again, soon enough--see it over an dover, until it was only another face.

After he was certain that suitable progress was being made at the Lake, he would go on to Kharemough. He would work to solidify his new position, gaining influence, making himself an indispensable part of the new interstellar technology. He would keep his Police Com mandership, too, and build his power base from there.

Whatever it took, whatever was needed. . . .

He looked back again for a moment into the life that had brought him to this place, considered the ordeals that had prepared him for this future he had chosen, even as they had made it inevitable. They had seemed to him like the end of everything . . . and yet he had survived them all. None of them had been more than a prelude, a moment in time that had allowed him to begin the rest of his life.

There would be no more self-inflicted wounds, no

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more hesitation, no more blind allegiance to rules made by human beings as imperfect as himself. He would survive anything that got in his way, because he knew he could. He would return to Tiamat, and together with

Moon he would see that power passed into the right hands. Together they would start another future, they would set right old wrongs, they would-- He caught himself smiling again like a lovestruck fool. He sighed. No . . . never for the right reasons.

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His intercom bleeped loudly in the silence "Inspector?"

He turned back from the window, startled His sudden movement swept the antique watch from the windowsill onto the floor His heel came down before he could stop it, crushing the gold case, the jeweled animal faces, the fragile works within

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He lifted his foot, crouched down, picking up the pieces as gently as though he were lifting an injured child He placed the watch on the sill again, and stood over it, looking down His mouth trembled