World's End

Page 141

I thank the gods that there are no victims being offered up today, to be sacrificed to the terrible power she summons

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like a lightning rod.

Her possession goes on and on, agonizingly. My own mind grows heavy and dim; I stand gazing out at the surface of fire until my vision burns away and all I see are the phantoms that haunt my inner eye. The hot wind rising up the cliff face stuns me. I imagine myself melting, flowing down to meet the surface of the Lake. . . .

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JOAN D. VINGE

Song breaks out of Transfer again, falls forward against the platform rail. The crowd's roar of appreciation startles me out of my daze. Song straightens away from the railing, pushing her hair back from her sweating face. She raises her hands again, gasping for breath, to shout, "Is there a judgment? Today the Lake will judge you--through him!" She points.

She is pointing at me. "No!" I say. I try to run toward

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the ladder, but my feet turn me back again. My body belongs to the Lake now, not to me. I watch numbly as

Goldbeard forces someone up the ladder to stand before me--two men, frightened and angry.

They begin to argue, accusing each other: "He stole my slave--" "I won him fair--!"

I can't listen, I refuse to listen, searching for the strength to stop what Song is about to do to me.

I cover my ears with my hands again as she cries, "What is the truth?" But Goldbeard jerks my hands down and pins them behind me. The two men back away from us, staring.

"Leave me alone!" I throw myself forward, using the pain of my twisted arms; I shout a sibyl litany--anything, to stop my mind from unraveling like a thread as Song asks the question again and again. I shut my eyes against the sight of the Lake but it burns its way through my lids. No escape--

"What is the truth?"

I sway ... I feel myself letting go ... and suddenly far below me the Lake passes through a spectral shift-- red orangeyellowgreen blue.

I dissolve, flowing out into the Lake--not my body, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter,

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