World's End

Page 31

Hahn unfastened the high collar of her coveralls, and showed me her trefoil tattoo.

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The shock of recognition left me speechless for a moment. I haven't been near a sibyl since . . .

since I

left . . .

The memory of another face, a young, shining face above that same tattoo, transfixed me. Snow, stars, the teeming streets of a city at Festival time--another world 37

JOAN D. VINGE

filled my eyes. Tiamat. One stolen night, on a world I

would never see again, came back to me in an excruciating moment of loss and longing. And as I remembered

I felt the sweet, yearning body of Moon, who was as fair and as untouchable as her name, pressed against my own. She belonged to another man, I belonged to another world . . . and yet that night our need had fused our separate worlds and lives into one--

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When I recovered my wits, Hahn was staring at me with open concern. I remember mumbling something, turning away to hide the sudden hot surge of desire the memory aroused in me.

Her hand reached out to me, drew back again, as if she were afraid that I feared her touch.

Everyone knows there is no cure for the man-made Old Empire virus that turns a sibyl's brain into a biological computer port. And everyone knows the infection can drive an unsuitable host insane.

"It's all right... I'm not afraid," I whispered. Only her blood or saliva in an open wound could infect me. But

I understood suddenly why Spadrin had reacted so violently

--out of superstitious fear. And I saw Hahn through different eyes, now that I knew the Old Empire's eternal sibyl machinery had chosen her above all others for her humanity and strength of will. She was not like other human beings. If she was afraid to go after her daughter, it wasn't for the reasons I'd first imagined.

"You know where your daughter is out there?" I asked finally, because I had to say something.

Hahn nodded, her face filling with relief as she saw that I was not rejecting her. "There's a --a place, a ruined

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city called Sanctuary, by Fire Lake. She's there."