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as a traitor to my own people, and to myself. I was even proud of it. I felt like a saint, like the bearer of some secret truth. . . .
Like a love-blind fool, like a coward. There is no truth; there are only differences of opinion.
But I came to Number Four, and tried to say that it was all behind me, forgotten, an aberration; tried to get on with my duty and my life. I memorized every law on record, and enforced them to the letter! But now all I
could see was that I was living a lie, going through motions that hid the emptiness inside the form, like a saint without a god. Until my brothers came, and told me what I'd--what they'd done. The final failure of the law.
And after that even self-discipline wasn't enough to save me.
It was only a matter of time before I ended up here.
Did everyone see it but me--?
I sat by the steaming lake until darkness fell. I tried to meditate, alone in the susurrous twilight, but I couldn't
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concentrate on even the simplest adhani. I couldn't face returning to the rover, either, and so I didn't. I spent the night there. I slept, finally, dying the little death. . . .
And dreamed that I was buried alive. I had been searching for a soft darkness to hide myself in, always knowing that the only perfect peace was the grave
. . . until at last I dug myself a pit too deep to crawl out of. At last I lay down, to let oblivion spill in on me;
welcoming the darkness from which there would never be a morning.
But instead of peace I knew only horror--smothering, blinding, paralyzing horror. I cried out to Death: It was a mistake, I wasn't ready, it wasn't time, let me go back!
And Death appeared, wearing the face of a madwoman dressed in rags, holding morning in her hands as she asked me, "What would you give for this?"
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"Anything!" I cried. But I had nothing left to give her; I had thrown it all away.
"There is no more time/' she said. And Death swelled and spread and opened gaping jaws of blackness ... a roaring, rumbling fury rose out of the depths of the earth to claim me. The earth shook, dirt cascaded onto me from the rim of the open grave--
Terror woke me, to the light of a new morning--to the ground shaking beneath me, to a rumbling that seemed to rise through the planet itself. To a white plume of water boiling in the mist, forty meters high. I stared at it, stared at the shrouded world around me in dumbfounded panic. . . . Ang's geyser! I scrambled to my feet and ran back toward the rover, suddenly far more afraid of being left behind than I was of facing Ang or Spadrin again.
The rover materialized like a vision out of the fog. I
halted in my tracks, panting, trying to get my panic under control. Ang and Spadrin stood beside the vehicle, watching the geyser. Ang looked away abruptly, as if he
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sensed my presence. "Gedda!" he shouted, and gestured at me.
I joined them, not looking at Spadrin. I felt his mocking stare burn the S into my forehead.
"Where the hell have you been?" Ang said. "We've lost two days."
"Two days?" I said stupidly. I looked at my watch-- my watch was gone. And suddenly I saw that my hand was clenched in a fist, realized that it had been that way since I woke. I pried my fingers open . . . saw the uncut solii that lay in my palm. My hand knotted convulsively, before anyone else could see the stone. Dimly I remembered seeing footprints in the sand around me, where there had been none before. . . . "But I was only gone overnight. I... slept out." I waved a hand back the way
I'd come.
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"Two days!" Ang was as sure of it as I was. "I searched all over. Thought you fell into a goddamn crater, or got swallowed up-- I told you never to do that!"
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"I don't understand. . . ."I felt my face, felt only the barest stubble of beard, and the scab of a half-healed bite on my jaw. I didn't feel hunger or thirst enough for two days. But he was as sure as I was; and he hadn 't found me. I felt as if something were trying to strangle me. I wiped my hand across my mouth.
Ang shook his head. Maybe that was meant to be an answer. "Let's go. That geyser only lasts about an hour.
I don't want to lose another day."
Spadrin climbed into the rover's cab. Ang hesitated, staring at the mark on my forehead.
"Thanks," I murmured.
"Thanks for waiting two days." I knew Spadrin wouldn't have waited.
He only shook his head again, and followed Spadrin up.
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day ...
D don't know what day it really is. Have I been out here all my life? It hardly matters. The rover is a reeking oven. My clothes are unbearable; I've given up and stripped to my shorts with the others. My skin is peeling off like tissue, like a sunburn, from the allergies.
We found the next part of Ang's trail easily enough, anyway. We've been following the dry riverbed for a couple of days, I think ... a few days. A week. More wastes of salt and alkali. ... In the distance now I can see plumes of smoke--volcanoes, Ang says. This is rift country, where the planet's crust is thinnest. Its molten core boils up out of cracks, to shatter the permanence of our illusions. Somewhere out there is Fire Lake. Waiting for me--
And Song, waiting too. Why? Why are you there?
Sibyls are permanence and stability, the sanest people alive. Why would you run away into this?
What knowledge were you seeking, what pain were you escaping
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from? Your picture can't tell me. It's only a picture
. . . and yet, sometimes I feel as if I could reach into it and touch you.
But you're all unreachable--sibyls live everywhere at once, waiting to be called into someone else's mind, to answer a stranger's need. The way you answered my need. You found me in the wilderness and you saved me.
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You delivered me from my enemies, you gave me the gift of my life.
So that I could throw it away again, the day I left you on Tiamat. And now I'm sinking into quicksand, and I
can't help myself. . . . Thank the gods you can't see me now. At least you'll never have to know the truth about me, the way my father did.
But I still need you. I need you more than ever ... if
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I could only find you, touch you, hold you, make you mine the way I should have, everything would be right again--
You gave me back the future. And now I'm lost in it;
like a wretched dog howling after the moon.
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another day.
This one was the worst yet. We lost most of our food today--thanks to Spadrin and his selfish, craven stupidity.
He got into another argument with Ang a few days ago, about his using the rover's main power access for his plugheading. Even Ang finally agreed that the rover's electrical system shouldn't be used for anything unnecessary.