World’s End (6 page)

I frowned
at her peculiar choice of words. “What do you want to prove? Whether she’s all
right? Whether she’s dead?”

She stared
at me. She shook her head again. “That I love her.”

I felt my
face go empty. I crouched down, pointlessly adjusting a dial on one of my
instruments. I only looked up again when I was sure of my expression. And,
looking up at her, I wondered what had drawn or driven her daughter into
World’s End.

“She isn’t
dead. I’ve had messages from her. But she ... she isn’t all right. Her mind
...” Hahn’s hand moved in vague circles, and her mouth pinched. “She says that
Fire
Lake
speaks to her, through her. I can’t bear knowing that she’s out there, helpless
....” Her eyes were full of pain—and the one other emotion I always recognized.
Guilt.
“I want her brought back to me, if she can be
made to come.”

I sighed.
“Why haven’t you gone after her yourself?”

She looked
away. “I can’t. I’m needed here. The Company needs
me,
they wouldn’t let me go out there. And besides, no one wants to take me.”

Afraid
, 1 thought. “What about her father?”

“Her father
is dead.” She looked down, and for a moment her face was bleak with memory. “He
was so much like her. Neither of them ever
understood ....
I’m a sibyl,
Gedda
. And so is she.” Hahn unfastened
the high collar of her coveralls, and showed me her trefoil tattoo.

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
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—

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 city called Sanctuary, by
Fire
Lake
.
She’s there.”

“It really
exists?” I’d read about the lost city, the way I’d read of Fire Lake itself—as
a thing shimmering on the edge of reality, lost in a haze of legend. Supposedly
it was a haven for criminals and degenerates fleeing from Hegemonic law, who
preyed on fortune-seekers who struck it lucky.

Hahn nodded
again. “I’ve seen it, through her eyes, in—in Transfer.” There was a peculiar
hesitation, as if she were leaving something unsaid. “All they say about
World’s End is true: To stay there too long is to lose
yourself
forever.” She glanced down.

I’d heard
that radiation, or perhaps just the strangeness, caused physical and mental
deterioration in people who spent too long out there. “Gone to
Fire
Lake
”
means “gone crazy” on Number Four. I shook my head. “I don’t know how I can
help you. I’ve come to search for my brothers, and I don’t even know how I’m
going to do that. It will take all the time I have, and more, just to pick up
their trail in that wasteland. I’m sorry, sibyl.”

I was
ashamed to look up at her, ashamed to refuse a sibyl anything, even though
logically I had no reason for guilt. Sibyls are the speakers of the Old
Empire’s preserved wisdom, the selfless bearers of an artificial intelligence
that moves them in strange ways. They say that it is “death to kill a sibyl,
death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl ....”

The memory
of another time still lay like cobweb across my mind’s eye: the memory of another
face, gazing up at me with eyes the color of moss-agate.
The
trefoil sign like a star on her ivory skin.
The strength and wisdom that
changed everyone she touched—

When I
first met her I saw only an ignorant barbarian girl. But she was the child of a
queen, about to become a queen in her own right ... a sibyl, already fated for
a destiny far greater than my own. I was the one who had been unworthy.

I forced my
mind back into the present and watched Hahn try to control her disappointment.
After a moment she asked, “Do you have a picture of your brothers? Perhaps I
might have seen them somewhere around the town.”

I pulled
out the
holo
I carry with me and gave it to her.
“They look younger there. It’s an old picture.” Once it had been a picture of
the three of us. I’d had my own image removed.

She studied
it, and nodded. “Yes ... yes. I did see them. I spoke to them about my
daughter. They were—” She glanced away, embarrassed.

I felt my
face flush, as I imagined what SB’s response must have been. “I apologize to
you for their behavior, sibyl. They’ve brought enough shame on my family
already to make the shades of our ancestors weep blood.” I looked down, holding
my scarred wrists against my sides.

“There’s
something more about them.” She held the
holo
up, turning
it in the light. “Yes ... I’ve seen them since, somewhere else.” She closed her
eyes, frowning in concentration.
“In Transfer ... in
Sanctuary.”

Through her daughter’s eyes, in the sibyl Transfer.
That was what she meant.
A lead
, I thought,
a real lead, at last!
I exhaled, realized then that I had been
holding my breath. A part of my mind resisted, telling me that this was too
easy, that she could be lying out of self-interest—that even sibyls were human
beings, not machines. I’d seen plenty of faces as open as hers hide every kind
of
lie ....

But it was
the only clue I had, genuine or not. It was something, a place to start—the
focus I so desperately needed for my search. Gratitude and hope shouted down my
doubts; I felt my mouth relax into a smile for the first time in days. “Thank
you,” I said. “I’ll go to
Fire
Lake
, I’ll find the city.
I’ll look for your daughter, and I’ll bring her back to you if I can ....” I
glanced away self-consciously. “Another sibyl—helped me, once. Maybe it’s time
I repaid my debt.”

“Does
Ang
know that you’re searching for something besides
treasure?” Hahn asked.

I shook my
head. “Not yet. He’s a difficult man to talk to.” It had seemed too awkward to
try to explain the truth. I’d decided to wait for a better time.

“How will
you get them to search for what you want to find?”

I laughed.
“I’ll worry about that after I get this damned thing running.” I glanced at the
rover, and back at her. “What about
Ang
, by the way?”

“What do
you mean?”

“You came
to his place last night. You know him?”

“We only
worked together.” She suddenly looked defensive. “I gave him assignments for
years. I thought ... he promised that he’d help me, when he was free of the
Company. He said it so many times. But it isn’t the Company he’s belonged to
all these years,
it’s
World’s End. World’s End has
poisoned him, just like—” Her mouth quivered. “Don’t depend on him. And don’t
let it happen to you. Whatever you do, don’t lose yourself in World’s End.”

I smiled
again. “I have no intention of it.”

She looked
at me strangely for a moment, before she reached into the soft beaded pouch
that she wore at her belt. She brought out two objects and gave them to me. One
was a
holo
of a woman’s face—her daughter, Song. The
other was the trefoil pendant of a sibyl, the ancient barbed-fishhook symbol of
biological contamination that matched the tattoo at her throat. I’d never held
a sibyl’s pendant, and for some reason I was almost afraid to touch it now. I
thought suddenly of the day, half a lifetime ago, when my father had sent me to
one of the Old Empire’s choosing places. Just to stand before the place where
some ancient automaton judged the suitability of the future’s youth to become
sibyls had paralyzed me. I had returned home without ever entering it, and told
my father that I’d failed the
test ....

Hahn stood
waiting, still holding out the trefoil. I took it
gingerly,
let it dangle from its chain between my fingers. A sense of impropriety, almost
of violation, filled me as I handled it. I had no right to possess such a
thing. “You want me to have this? Why?”

“A talisman.”
She smiled, a little uncertainly.
“And a proof.
Show it to my daughter, when you find her. Then she’ll know that you come from
me.” She gripped my hands suddenly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For whatever
you do, thank you so much.” Tears filled her eyes. “I love my daughter,
Gedda
, even if she can’t believe it. I feel her suffering,
every day, and I’m helpless to stop it. Why did I ever ...” She shut her eyes;
tears ran down her cheeks.

“Why did
she leave?” I asked, realizing suddenly that there was still more she hadn’t
told me.

But she
only shook her head, turning away. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Please help
her—” Her voice broke into sobs. She went quickly away from me, weeping
uncontrollably, as if her relief at finding someone to take up her burden had
left her defenseless against her grief.

I watched
her until she was gone from sight, feeling a hard knot of unexpected emotion
caught in my throat. I looked down at the picture and the trefoil still lying
in my hands, knowing that she hadn’t given those things lightly to a stranger.
She had told me the truth. She had lost her child, and her suffering was real
enough. I know about
loss ....

The trefoil
threw spines of reflected light into my eyes, making them tear. I remembered
suddenly how tears had come into my eyes on the day that I told my father I was
leaving home ... though I never imagined then that it would be forever. I would
have broken down like Hahn, if I’d known—

It was hard
enough to keep my composure as I saw his face. “How much ... how much time have
thou to spend with us, before thou must leave?” he asked me. He was standing in
the High Hall, erect and dignified in the uniform that he wore even at home,
the symbol of his pride as head of a family as old and honorable as any on
Kharemough
. But his voice sounded strangely weak as he
asked the question.

“A little over a month.”
I smiled as I
answered,
trying to believe that
it was a long time. The limpid counterpoint of a choral work by
Tithane
filled the silence between us, and eased the ache
in my throat. I stared out the wide windows at the sky. Pollution aurora marred
the perfect blue, a constant reminder of
Kharemough’s
overworked orbital industries—the price we paid for our leadership in the
Hegemony.

“We must
notify thy mother. She will surely want to see thee once more ... if her work
will allow it.”

I didn’t
answer, afraid that anything I said would be the wrong thing. Suddenly my chest
hurt. I recited an
adhani
under my breath. Mother had
gotten fed up with us all when I was only five. I could count on the fingers of
my hands the times I’d seen her since then. She spent her time on another
continent halfway around the world, leading archeological excavations of Old
Empire
ruins ....
I had heard so many times as a child
that I wasn’t to blame that I was sure it must somehow have been my fault. She
didn’t come home before I left
Kharemough
.

“Are thou
certain this is the right course? After all,
thou’re
only a boy—” I saw the trembling of his
hands, which he usually controlled so well.