I look up at him. "Because I didn't have anywhere else to go."
He smiles the crippled smile again, looking for the scars on my wrists. "Did you think World's End would do what you didn't have the guts to do yourself?" He tugs at his collar.
I look down at my scars, and back at SB again, remembering the disdain in his eyes the last time we met. There are no scars on his wrists; none on HK's either. And suddenly the weals on my own arms are only healed flesh, nothing more. SB breaks my gaze. I snap the gun back together, and hand it to him.
"There's nothing wrong with this. The charge is used up, that's all."
His frown comes back; he takes it wordlessly.
"Anubah--owns you?" I ask. The words feel awkward and ugly.
"Yes." I barely hear his answer. His fingers fumble with the gun.
I take a deep breath, shutting my eyes against a stabbing
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memory of cages and pain. "HK said he trusts you.
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He trusts you enough to let you work on a weapon like that?"
SB laughs harshly. "As long as I wear this." He tugs at his collar again.
"A block?" I ask, looking at it with sudden recognition.
He nods. "If we try to use anything with a power charge while we're wearing this--" He makes an abrupt, brutal motion. "Anubah's got the control."
I shake my head. "Where the hell do they get something like that, here?"
"They trade for it, trade whatever they can find out there--trade for everything they can't steal off of poor
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bastards like us."
"With whom?"
"The Company." He shrugs. I raise my eyebrows.
"Thousands of people work for the Company," he says, "and most of them barely get a living out of it. There are plenty who've willing to deal with real criminals, since they work for thieves already. At least this way they get their share."
I remember Ang, and I nod.
"You're not wearing a collar." He stares at me. "Are you free? How? Why?"
I show him the trefoil. "I wear this."
"A sibyl sign?"
I explain again, as briefly as possible.
He gapes at me, like HK did. "By all our ancestors, you're the last one I'd ever expect. . . . But you sound sane enough. Are you sure you're infected?"
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I watch a ghost wander through him, and through the rug that hangs motionless across the doorway. The Lake stirs restlessly inside me. I laugh once. "I'm sure."
"Not everyone around here is afraid of sibyls. Some of them really are insane . . . and some of them don't have enough imagination to go crazy, or to be afraid 193
JOAN D. VINGE
of anything either. Your luck won't hold forever."
"They don't touch Song." But I remember that she still keeps Goldbeard and a company of guards.
"Song!" He makes her name into a curse. "Everyone needs gods ... especially in a place like this.
If they don't have gods they invent them. They think she has power over Fire Lake--that her being here keeps Sanctuary from
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melting down and running into some crack in space."
"She does."
"What?" He snorts with laughter.
"She does communicate with the Lake. So do I. It's something to do with a sibyl's the receptivity, but I don't completely understand it yet. I see and hear things you wouldn't believe, since . . ."
"Shit, you are insane." He looks away. "And so is she.
She's crazier than anyone here--or she's a better actor than anybody I've ever seen."
"She's both." I sigh, remembering the first time I saw her. "But she's trapped here just like the rest of us. And
I swore I'd get her out--" I watch his face fill with disbelief "--just like I swore I'd get you out, and HK."
"Why, for gods' sakes?"
I stare at him. Finally I shake my head. "I wish I
knew." I put out my hand. "Give me the gun."
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He pulls back, his body tensing. "Anubah--"
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"Tell him it was ruined. He trusts you."
SB grimaces. But then he nods, and hands me the gun.
"If you can find a powerpack maybe you'll stay free a little longer, anyway."
"Long enough to get us all out of here." I fight down a wave of sickening self-doubt. "I will--!" I push the gun through my belt, covering it with my jerkin.
SB glances from side to side, his hands clenching.
"Yes, by all the gods! You can do it, BZ. Get us out of here. We'll steal a flyer. We can do it now, before Anubah
--"
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"No. I have to ... I have to ... find ..." I stumble over words as the Lake pours its anguish into me. "I can't leave
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yet ... I have to find ... I don't know why yet. . . ."
"What's the matter with you?" SB shouts. He slaps me. "Goddamn you, forget about Song.
We're your brothers! She's nothing but a lunatic."
I climb to my feet, rubbing my face. He grabs at my clothes as I rise, trying to hold on to me. I jerk free as HK
comes up behind me. HK stops uncertainly, his face running with sweat. Suddenly the watch begins to chime in my belt pouch.
"My watch," HK murmurs, when the chiming stops.
"You found my watch." He reaches out, pawing at my belt. "Let me see it. Let me have it--"
I slap his hand away. "You lost it. I got it back. It's mine now." I look down, touching the pouch.
"It was never yours to begin with."
His face crumples. "But it was all I had left."
"You've still got your life." I glance at SB. "I'll be back.
I've always done my duty."
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I make my way through the tumbled, stone- and rubbish-choked passages between buildings, out Page 156
into an open square where I can get my bearings. I start upward, climbing ladders and steps, toward the heights where Song's tower lies. I will go there and wait for her. I try not to think about what will happen then;
afraid of the Lake's response, when it knows my every thought. . . .
I turn a corner and collide with another body; curses wrench me back into the present. "You son of a bitch--"
the stranger says. He breaks off, shaking his head.
"Whose are you?" he says, his eyes narrowing as he looks me over, and doesn't see a weapon.
His voice is slurry with drink or drugs; his eyes are bloodshot.
For a moment I don't realize what he's asked. "I'm nobody's . . . I'm a sibyl." I touch my trefoil.
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His face turns greedy instead of afraid. "Then I can use you."
"I belong to the Lake!" I say. "I have Song's protection."
"She didn't tell me that." He laughs, and there is a knife in his hand. He flashes it at me almost carelessly.
"Come on, pilgrim." His other hand closes over my arm, twisting it.