"So, pilgrim, did you get what you came for?" a voice asks me unexpectedly.
Page 129
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
165
JOAN D. VINGE
The sudden question almost throws me into Transfer.
My mind stumbles and pulls itself together desperately. Stop! Stop! "Yes! . . . What?" I find myself staring up into
Goldbeard's mottled face. "What do you want?" I glare at him, because his expression fills me with cold fear. I
remember that he heard me tell Song I wasn't a sibyl. But 1 am a sibyl. . . . Slipping, slipping.
Concentrate! Stop. I
take deep breaths, mumbling an adhani; knowing that it's futile, but somehow succeeding anyway.
"I want what belongs to me--"
For a moment my floundering brain thinks he means the watch.
"--the solii."
I blink. "The . . . Song gave you your reward." I try to push past him, but he grabs my arm.
"A lousy diamond. Where's the solii?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
I have to stop and remember. And then I tell him.
His jaw drops in moronic disbelief, snaps shut again with fury. "I'll spill your guts and find it, pilgrim--" He shakes me. "Only ..." He lets me go abruptly. "She says not to touch you. She says you belong to the Lake now."
He stares at me, as if he is seeing the sweat-streaked designs on my face for the first time.
I nod, eager to make him believe it.
"You hear the Lake talk?" he asks. "You see the future and the past?"
"Does . . . does she?"
"Sure." He nods, and I feel a giddy wash of relief. I was right. The ghosts, the buildings, are not hallucinations
. . . they're something else. . . . One less symptom, one more clue. "Do you see them?" I ask.
He laughs, and spits. "Nah. She's the sibyl, the one got power over the Lake. It has her, and it leaves us alone."
Page 130
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"What do you mean?" The more I know about Song, the more I will know about what she has really done to me.
166
WORLD S END
He shrugs impatiently. "I told you. The Lake does crazy things. It sucks you up and spits you out some other time. It makes things change so you can't find them. Look around here--" He waves a hand, covering an arc of jumbled ruins. "Only here it's better now, since the Lake has her. She takes care of us." He strikes his chest with a huge hand. "And I take care of her. I get rid of anybody tries to do anything wrong with her." His eyes gleam with fanatical promise. "But she said let you alone . . . for now."
"What does it want with her?"
"You tell me!" he snorts. "You tell me, pilgrim. What does it want with you? What does she want with a limp
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
one like you? Did she have you?" He stares me up and down, eyeing the painted whorls that cover my skin.
Echoes of lust and sudden shame burn inside me, fire and ice.
He reads the answer in my face, and his own face fills with sullen envy. His hands clench. Even he is afraid to touch her. . . . And now I recognize the real source of her power. Her magic is just a game; even her sibyl's blood is nothing but a symbol. All her power over them lies with the Lake, in her control over it. But Goldbeard doesn't understand the Lake's power any more than I do.
She said I'm the one who was supposed to understand. But I don't understand! I feel my concentration dissolving like bubbles in an undersea swell of futility.
There is someone else I need to ask Goldbeard about, something else I need to know. And he can tell me, if I can just hold on. . . .
By the time I recapture my drifting consciousness he is gone, and I am standing alone inside a crowd of rattling blue ghosts. They hover in the air; they seem to be doing something technical
... I can't find the strength to wonder what it is. I push through them as if they
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
aren't there, and move on aimlessly into town.
Page 131
i67
JOAN D. VINGE
She said I'm the one; but I'm the wrong one. She's crazy--and so am I. The hopelessness of everything numbs my brain. I only want to forget. ... I let my mind wander, until somehow I am reliving scenes from an Old
Empire romance that I read long ago--the story of the first sibyl who ever lived, of how she survived in the days of the Empire's fall. The daughter of bioscientists, blessed and cursed by the divine madness that was the legacy of her murdered parents, she was lost on alien worlds, victimized by the family she thought she could trust . . . with only one true friend in the entire galaxy, one man who loved her and knew she was not insane.
And she believed he was dead. . . .
I blunder into a pile of rubble and fall down, ripping the knees of my pants, bruising my palms.
The pain clears my head, and I swear with disgust. Stupid, romantic
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
crap--a book I left behind on Tiamat because I
never wanted to see it again. I wonder why I even remember.
. . .
Because she never gave up! my mind says angrily. She fought for her sanity, for her life, and she won. She saved herself, and the future. . . . // isn 't over yet. It isn 't over until you surrender.
I sit back against a pillar, holding on to the present with all my strength. I look up, focusing on the shadowed portico of the abandoned building. A dim finger of ruddy light points into the building's darkened interior, touching a wall of solid rock. There is no one inside, not even a ghost. I wonder what this place really was. . . . What was this city? Irrational pleasure fills me as I ask, and then uncontrollable frustration when I don't have the answer. "I should know] Why don't I know--?"
I grind my fists on the dusty tiles of the entryway until the seizure passes. And then, fighting to keep control, I
begin to practice the rituals that Moon taught me. I force myself to recognize how similar the disciplines are to the
168
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
WORLD S END
adhani, just as she said. Perhaps they even have a common origin. The familiarity calms me, and slowly I begin to believe that I can make them a part of me, a shield against the chaos that is Page 132
loose in my mind.
But as I let the belief take hold, a flood.of irrational pleasure pours into me, sweeping everything away.
"Moon!" I cry, "Moon--" I make myself remember the one person who still believes in me, the one person who still loves me. And blind passion becomes my love for her, genuine, measurable, real ... a sea anchor, until reality resolidifies around me.
I slump back against the pillar, drained. What use is it to practice the sibyl litanies--? I turn the trefoil over an dover with uncertain hands. They may save me from the Transfer, but they can't stop fits of manic depression from leaving my mind in ruins, every time I try to think rationally.
And that is the difference between real sibyls and madmen. . . .