I get up when she is gone. I watch from the tower window as she wanders away across the plaza, shaded beneath her canopy, trailed by guards. The people she passes bow and prostrate themselves to her; some offer her things that glitter in the sunlight. Someone gets too close to her, and suddenly Goldbeard is there, hurling him away. In the distance Fire Lake mutates restlessly and murmurs with ghosts. The moment I look at it I am possessed, lost for what seems like hours. . . .
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Finally I stagger away from the window, faint with hunger and exhaustion. I force myself to choke down what is left of Song's food, although the pointlessness of eating knots my stomach.
And then I go to her bed and fall across it, and sleep some more.
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When I wake she is still gone. I have no idea what time it is. I wander in a daze through the empty, silent rooms of the tower. It surprises me that I am alone, that Song does not have servants surrounding her here like she does outside, to wait on her every need. Are they all so afraid of her? Or doesn 't she want her subjects that close to her? One of the rooms is a bathroom, and it actually functions. I
use it, unspeakably grateful for privacy and comfort.
Water actually flows from the cracked spout of the ornate tub. I splash myself, trying to clean the grime and painted patterns from my body; too tired to wonder how I came to be painted, or to care that all I do is make more
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tracks in the filth. I can't remember why it matters, anyway.
Shivering, I go back into the bedchamber. My clothes are still there, torn and stinking rags. I pull my pants on awkwardly; my clumsy body seems to belong to someone else. Only its pain belongs to me. I sigh as
I fasten the pants, hating the touch of the stiff, dirty cloth against my raw skin, and yet somehow comforted by it. There are other clothes, better ones, among the heaps of offerings piled up around the room.
There's one of everything ever made here, I think, and hear my own idiot laughter. Jewels, tools, odd pieces of furniture and broken equipment. I pick up a leather vest woven with gems and metal and put it on like protective armor.
But I see the Lake as I glance up, and it calls me. I go back to the window again. I stand watching helplessly, gaping into otherwhere, while the Lake turns my mind inside out.
Until suddenly a familiar tinkling chime unlocks the prison of my obsession. I turn distractedly, and see my belt lying across the bed. The silvery music stops abruptly, before its pattern is complete. I rush to the bed, fumbling open my pouch. All that is left inside it is my father's watch. I shake the watch with trembling hands, and listen as it finishes its chime. I kiss it.
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JOAN D. VINGE
Time lives! Gravity still holds me to the planet's surface.
Somewhere in the universe electrons spin along in orderly subatomic paths, planets circle suns, galaxies spiral through the night. Pattern balances chaos. The knowledge fills me with triumph . .
. triumph overwhelms me, reflecting back and back in the mirrors of my insanity, until my thoughts fall to pieces.
I hold the watch up to my eyes, trying desperately to remember . . . "My brothers! I came here to find my brothers!" I shut my eyes, make myself see their faces; I rebuild my sense of purpose bit by bit out of broken fragments. . . .
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And when I open my eyes again they stand before me, ragged, hazed in blue. I can see the sky through their backs. "HK? SB? Where--where are you?" I ask, barely
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believing what I see. "Are you alive? Tell me where--"
"You can't be serious," SB sneers. "You're going iogive it away?"
He is not answering what I say, but the voice of some angry ghost inside my head. Shut up! I think furiously, trying to shout down my madness--realizing suddenly that the ghost voice I hear is my own.
But when I focus my eyes again I am alone, listening to the memory of a conversation with my brothers
. . . not the one I just had, but another one, that I know has never happened.
I get up from the bed, cursing in frustration, with the watch clutched in my hand. The room is an obstacle course of things Song has extorted from her worshipers.
I kick my way through silver dishes and dismantled terminals; walking in circles, forcing myself to pass the window again and again without looking out. And every time I do, the compulsion, the yearning, the need, to look out at Fire Lake leaves me weak. Somehow I am the Lake's victim, as much as I am Song's. "You belong to the Lake now." Everything she told me after she infected me
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WORLD S END
must be true. I begin to believe the incredible evidence of my senses, even though I don't know how or why Fire
Lake has invaded my mind. I may be crazy, but the
Lake's power over me is real enough.
And if it is real, then somehow there has to be a way to break it. I go back to the bed and lie down again. I count, I calculate, I recite a dozen different alphabets out loud to keep my thoughts my own. The watch chimes, marking meaningless segments of time. Outside the window the sky darkens; the chamber fills with the glow of Song's fire globe. I begin to lose my voice, I begin to repeat myself. I try to picture Moon, the one person whose face I can still bear to see. I talk to her memory about the memories we share, trying to speak coherently
. . . until gradually her memory becomes so real to me that I do see her, reaching out to me, in a halo of blue light. I sit up, calling her name--
I wrench myself back miserably to the multiplication
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tables. I count on my fingers, as my diseased mind fights me like an addict's, wanting only to surrender to chaos, to flow out into the Lake's haunted dream world. Struggle is pointless, chaos whispers in my head. Pattern is an illusion, order is a lie, the universe is random. Suns die, worlds collide, life is an accident, meaningless and futile.
You are insane. You control nothing. . . .
"The periodic table of elements is not a lie!" I shout hoarsely, and refuse to listen. And as time crawls by I
feel my confidence returning, a little. / can hold on. It can't force me fo do anything I don't want to do. I'll learn to live with it, if I have to. Song does. But I know that I can only retain this much control by putting all my concentration into it. I
can't do that forever. It's only a matter of time. . . .
Despair fills me again.
And what about the rest? it cries. I'm infected! Every time I hear a question I can't answer, my mind goes out of my body. I can't live a sane life that way!
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JOAN D. VINGE
/ can learn to control it,
Only a sibyl can do that. I'm not a sibyl, I wasn't chosen, I'm not right for it! I'm not strong enough. (My legs tangle in bedding and I fall.) I can't!