World's End

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here?"

I shake my head. "I came for you."

She frowns unexpectedly. "Do you wear this honestly?"

Her eyes are too black as they stare into mine.

I shake my head again, barely.

Her hand tightens over the trefoil until the chain bites into my neck. "You will," she whispers.

Aloud, she says, "The Lake has chosen another servant! The Lake has shown me his coming. ... I claim him for the Lake; for myself." She holds my trefoil up so that it catches the light. The crowd rumbles with amazement. She looks back at Goldbeard. "Give me the solii you took from him."

Goldbeard stiffens. Slowly, reluctantly, he takes the stone from his pouch and hands it to her.

She holds it up in the air for the crowd to see, turning it between her fingers. She presses it between her palms

. . . and suddenly there is a large, sparkling gemstone in

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WORLD S END

her hand instead. The crowd laughs and cheers. "Your reward." She flips the gem to Goldbeard.

He catches it.

I watch greed and awe commingle on his face. "My

Watchman," she says almost tenderly, "you've brought me the right one at last--the one I've waited for, the one

I prophesied to myself."

Goldbeard's expression turns dark and uncertain. "He wants to take you away from us!" he says.

The crowd's voice echoes his suspicion ominously.

"I will never leave you," she says calmly, to him, to the watchers. "I can never leave the Lake."

"Then what you want with him?" Goldbeard's eyes are hot with anger. She stares at him. He looks down, glances at the Lake with fear on his face.

She turns back to the crowd. "This speaking is over!"

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She raises her hands and claps them. The red/gold cloak drops from her shoulders, to lie in a puddle of blood. It is lined with black. She wears only a thin, white shift beneath it; the shift Page 109

clings to her sweating body, concealing nothing. I suck in a breath of furnace-hot air. The crowd mutters and shouts its disappointment. They call out for something more, they want her to show them proof of what I am .. . they want more miracles, or more blood. But she ignores them. She ignores me, too, as if my gaze does not burn her flesh where it touches her.

"I will return to the tower," she tells Goldbeard.

"Bring him."

She goes down the ladder as lightly as a ghost. Figures materialize, bearing a canopy to shade her as she walks.

I want to go after her. Goldbeard knows it; he holds his gun on me. He holds me back until she grows small in the distance, following the canyon's edge . . . until I am ready to throw myself over the rail to keep from losing her. "Nobody goes with her," he says. "You only go to her." He lets me leave the platform at last as she disappears from sight; his men are still waiting below.

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141

JOAND. VINGE

They watch me even more darkly as they take me back to town.

We cross endless plazas piled with rubble, climb shallow steps chipped into the rockface and hot shining ladders. I climb awkwardly, using one hand. There are towers rising above the maze of tumbled structures;

round ones, square ones, two or three stories high, with tiny windows that stare like skeleton eyes. This place is old, older than memory. We come to a tower whose middle story is now a slab of red stone. The path to its base shines with beaten metal. A fence of bones beckons us, a human skull leers above two human guards lounging against the wall at the foot of the steps that circle it.

I feel as if I know this place; that it can only belong to her, only be what I've been moving toward, all this time.

. . . "Our time has come," I whisper. Goldbeard glances back at me.

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We stand beneath the skull's empty gaze as the guards come forward to challenge us. They wear a grotesque parody of armor; one of them is a huge woman nearly two meters tall. The other has a pot jammed onto his head. I laugh, and they glare at me with death in their eyes. Goldbeard mutters to them in a language I don't know, and they back away from me suddenly. They let me pass, and Goldbeard with me. We leave his men behind again.

Oh gods, oh gods, this is the way of return. It is all I can do to keep from running as we climb the stairs. Soon. Soon. Every second is an eternity passing, every step closes the gap of time. We Page 110

circle the tower of stone, pass through a heavy metal door into the chamber at its top. A breath of cool air greets us. I run my hands self-consciously over my filthy clothing: I am to appear before a queen.

It is cold in the chamber, as cold as the frozen wastelands of Tiamat, and I begin to shiver.

Moon rises from a massive carven seat filled with rich

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WORLD S END

rugs and pillows: a queen's throne. She holds out her hands. I start toward her, but Goldbeard jerks me back.

"Let him go!" she orders. "He is the Lake's chosen.

You are not to harm him." Goldbeard lets me go, angrily.

"Leave us," she says. As Goldbeard goes to the door with heavy reluctance, she calls, "We are not to be disturbed!"

We are alone. I am trembling now from the urge to take her, to feel her body-- I lift my hands, drop them again.

She glances at me, licking her lips, as if she knows exactly what I want. She touches my trefoil.

"The fishhooks--the bait." Her fingers slip downward to my belt and toy with the catch. "No one ever touches me.

It's been so long. . . ."

I feel my erection pressing painfully against my pants.

My hands make fists. No! I'm not an animal--! some dying thing inside me cries.

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She smiles at me--a strange, guarded smile, not one that I have ever seen on her face before.

"Why did you come? Why is it you, after so many .. . ?" Her eyes seem all pupil, all-knowing.

"I had to," I murmur. "You know I had to."

"Yes." She nods. "I know. Tell me who you are."

"BZ," I say desperately, searching her face for a sign.

"BZ, Moon, Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinu! Have I

changed so much?"

She looks my ragged, bloodstained body up and down with gentle amusement. "Tell me who I Page 111

am?"

"Moon! Moon, for gods' sakes, don't-- You found me in the wilderness, you saved me. You gave me back my life . . . you made me forget my scars." I hold out my wrists to her. "And then I left you to him! To that polluted weakling you thought you loved. I thought it was right; I thought I had to obey the code, and do what was honorable. Fuck honor! I'm free . . . nothing means any145

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JOAN D. VINGE

thing anymore; nothing but what I want. Nothing will come between us this time, not even time.

This time I'll have you forever--" I pull her into my arms, covering her mouth with my own.

She struggles in surprise, pushing me away. Her eyes are alive with an emotion that at first I mistake for rage.

She turns away from me with a curse, clenching her hands, shaking her head. Her shining hair absorbs all light. I take a deep breath and then another, trying to force my body to obey me.

Her shoulders loosen; she breathes calmly and easily again. She opens her hand as she turns back to me. The uncut solii is lying in it. I blink and smile. She closes her hand, opens it. The stone is perfectly cut and polished.

It glows with secret fire. "They say it has powers of enlightenment," she says. "Swallow it, false sibyl. Make it a part of you."

I cannot refuse her. I raise it to my lips hesitantly, put it into my mouth. I feel saliva gather on my parched

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tongue; the stone is smooth and pleasant, and it slides down my throat like water.

She nods. "Do you see me differently now? Do you know the truth yet?"

I shake my head.

"You will."

She seizes my arm and leads me wordlessly into another room, to a bed piled with fragrant perfumed pillows.

I fall across it; my legs are too weak to hold me up any longer. The room is a storehouse of strange and wonderful things heaped all around the walls; I gaze around me until my eyes blur, trying to separate one bit of color from another.

On a table by the bedside is a solitary globe filled with restless, molten light. I reach out to it, hypnotized; but just as I begin to feel its heat she brings a flagon of flowery brandy and presses it Page 112

to my lips. I drink it all.

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WORLD S END

She sits beside me, watching me, waiting "Who am

I now?"

I shake my head. "Moon."

"Where did you get the trefoil?"

I turn it over in my hands. I try to remember. "It was given to me. ..."

"A woman gave it to you. A sibyl. My mother. I know everything she does." She looks away toward the narrow window slit. The sky is blindingly blue beyond the walls, bright/dark, like her hair. "Did she tell you I'm crazy?"

I remember. I nod.

"That's what she thinks. I see through her eyes and she sees through mine. And I hear the secrets of the universe. The Lake tells me everything...." Moon's eyes

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glaze as if she is hearing them now. "Did she tell you why I'm this way?"

I shake my head.

"It's her fault. I wanted to be a sibyl, like her. I went to the choosing place.... I was judged, and refused!" She pulls painfully at her hair. "But my mother infected me anyway--" She is seeing me again; her eyes are on fire with hatred. "And now she wants me to stop tormenting her. 'Death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl!'" She beats on me with her fists. "She sent you to me, you come from her!" Her nails rake my cheek.

"But I'll make you the Lake's. I'll show her--"

I catch her wrists in my hands, force her back and down across the bed. I fall on top of her, ignoring the pain, blind to everything but her face as I cover it with kisses. She fights me wildly as I hold her prisoner, pressing my body down on hers. "Don't!" I gasp. "Don't, you're Moon, I love you--"

She has opened her mouth to bite me, to infect me-- She takes a deep, sobbing breath instead, staring back into my eyes. And then her eyes fill with tears. "I love

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