Authors: Joan D. Vinge
World’s End (17 page)
And he
knows it. He keeps testing me, moving in on me. He wants to catch me off guard.
I hardly dare to turn my back long enough to piss. One good arm is still all I
need to aim the rifle ... but I think he’s beginning to suspect why I don’t use
it.
We are
getting closer. I’m not dreaming that. How many days is
it ....
Too many.
We’re nearly out of water, anyway. But gods,
we’re almost there!
Help me,
Song—I know you see me, you need me, you know I’m coming to you. I can almost
reach you now, reach into this picture,
feel
your
silken silver hair flow over my fingers like moonlight. Feel your lips on mine.
Thou are as fair as aurora-
glow ....
At last.
At last ... this is how it happened, at last. I woke up. It was night, but the
rocks beside me glowed, dim and bloody.
I thought, I’m awake.
And for a second I didn’t understand the fear that filled me when I realized
it. I rolled over—the ground and the sky swam with the pain in my shoulder. I
sat up, reaching with my good arm for the stun rifle. It was gone.
Then I
looked up, and saw where it had gone.
Spadrin
stood over
me with the gun in his hands, grinning. He aimed it at my face and pressed the
stud. Nothing happened. “That’s what I thought,” he said. He drove the gun butt
into my bad shoulder. I screamed.
He laughed,
and threw the gun away. He dragged me to my feet, pushing me up hard against
the wall of the wash. I clung to the rough stone, sick with pain. His hand
caught in my hair and jerked my head back, until I had to look at him. “I owe
you a lot,
Gedda
,” he whispered. He struck me, almost
casually. “And now you’re going to collect.” He hit me again, harder, and there
was blood in my mouth. “Where do you want me to start,
gedda
?
Here
—?” His fingers jabbed at my throat,
and I retched.
“Or here?”
He twisted my sprained arm
until I screamed again.
“Or here—?”
Pain exploded in
my groin; I fell to my knees, sobbing helplessly. “What are you the most afraid
of?” He waited for my mind to clear, until I was sane enough to understand
again, and then he stepped back to study me. As he moved, a red glow lit his
face. He looked toward the light, and froze. “No!” he murmured. “No, it can’t
be ... I”
His
sun-blistered face hung above me like a bloody moon: the face of an animal, the
face of my enemy. I wanted to kill him. I wanted it more than I wanted to live—
And
suddenly his knife was in my hand, instead of in its
hidden sheath. I looked down at it with a kind of hunger. My fist tightened
around its hilt; its blade shone red.
“
Spadrin
!”
I hissed.
Disbelief
swelled his eyes as he saw the knife. He backed away from me, stumbled and went
down. I threw myself on top of him and pressed the knife to his throat.
“
Gedda
,” he gasped, “don’t, don’t!
I didn’t mean it, I swear by the
Unspoken Name! I’ll do anything ... name it, name it, what do you
want
from me!”
There was
only one thing I wanted from him. I raised the knife, letting it hang in the
air above him while I watched his face.
“
Please
—” he blubbered.
I smiled.
And then I drove the knife into his chest.
He
screamed, thrashing on the ground under me. I held him there, pulling the knife
out of him. Blood spurted over my hands, splattering my face, as he died. The
life went out of him like a sigh.
But I drove
the knife into him again, and again; because it wasn’t enough, because he
deserved so much more ... because it felt good. And with every death the
poisoned blood poured out of him, another demon flew up—he was filled with
demons, too much monstrous evil for one human body to contain. I saw every one
of his faces, I knew every one of his secret names—I killed him over and over
and over. And every time I destroyed another I was freer; I would be free
forever when I destroyed them all—I killed him and killed him and killed
him ....
The antique watch began to chime, disturbing
the funereal silence of his office, in which he sat like a mourner.
Gundhalinu
stirred at last; time present began to flow
again. He raised an unsteady hand to his belt and shut off the recorder; took
the watch from his pocket, listening to its familiar music. But still the
ghosts would not leave
him ....
I’m free!
I’m free
free
free
freefreefreefreefreefreefreefreefree
....
I sit
laughing in the turbid sand, laughing,
laughing ....
The
deathwatch beetles begin to gather around me, clicking their mandibles in
mourning. I scramble up with a curse, leaving them to their business. Looking
down at
Spadrin’s
corpse, suddenly I wonder what he
saw that made him look away from me. The glowing blackness whispers secret
words, and somehow I know what the answer must be—
It is.
Beyond the curve of wall I see it at last, waiting.
I
run shouting and crying out of the shadows onto the shore, the endless beach of
congealed rock leading down to the shining sea. It is all black and red, death
and blood. I fall to my knees in wonder. The sky is completely starless, and
the molten
a singularity in the heart of night.
The gnarled
stone of the beach is as warm as flesh beneath my touch. The surface has
congealed into the sightless eyes and gaping mouths of a million tiny faces;
they scream soundlessly beneath my weight, my probing fingers. I crawl over
them toward the perimeter of the
But
suddenly figures block my way.
Not
alone—?
I sit back, cradling my throbbing arm. Looking up, I know them,
these shuffling, trilling matchstick forms.
The cloud
ears ring me in like a tumbledown fence. I push myself to my feet within their
circle. The missionary woman we left in the steaming valley stands before me in
a corona of light, her ragged arms outstretched. “Have you discovered the true
nature of time?”
“You,” I
murmur. “How can you be here? We left you in the steaming valley days ago ....”
“Months and months ago.”
Her voice comforts me. She takes my hands gently, peering into my eyes.
Her face is hidden in shadow. She begins to turn me in a shuffling dance
between light and darkness.
“Months and
months
... ?”
I say, stumbling over my feet.
“
Eynstyn
and
B’ryllas
lost all track of Time,
When Time went to sea
in a bottle by
Klyn
.”
I sing the
old rhyme, laughing as her face goes into darkness again. “Time is adrift on
I shout exultantly. “Time is at sea!” I realize that she is not mad at all, but
speaking perfect sense. “Moon, Moon, our time is coming .... Ah, gods—”
I see the
old woman’s face again, but a frown is filling it up. Her eyes are suddenly
white with fear, looking down at my hands. “Where are the others?” she asks,
pulling away. Her eyes are clear and sharp.
“The others?”
I shrug. “They’re dead.
Spadrin
killed Ang. 1
killed
Spadrin
. He’s lying over there. I stabbed him,
and I’m glad.” I look at my red-stained hands. “He deserved it.”
She backs
away from me. “No,” she mutters, “no, no, no. You understand nothing. Don’t
touch me. It’s too late for you—”
“There is
no late!” I call, reaching after her. “There’s no time like the present, no
time to lose, no time at all—Wait!”
But the
cloud ears close around her like a rattling forest, and she flees with them
toward the wall of shadows.
I try to
run after them. I stumble and fall, and the sky and the sea change places—black
and red, red and black ... blackness.
I wake, to
the sun’s fiery face drowning in light at the sky’s blue-black zenith. Sweat
burns in the cracks of my parched lips. I lift a hand to shield my eyes from
the glare—but a shadow blocks out the sun, falling on me like a blow. I push
myself up. I am ringed in again by figures. This time they are all human, all
men, all armed. Their hard, closed faces and ragtag clothing tell me half a
dozen different stories, all with the same ending.
“There’s a
dead one over here!” a voice calls.
A grunt of disgust.
“Nothing left on him worth taking.”
One of the
men who watch me gestures with his hand. The others pull me back down,
spread-eagling me on the ground. He straddles me, looking down. He has mottled
skin, a thick red-gold braid and beard. He must weigh close to a hundred and
fifty kilos. “Search him.” They do. They take the knife sheath from my arm.
They take the pouch from my belt. “You kill him?”
Goldbeard
asks me.
“Yes!” I
shout hoarsely.
“Why?”
“He
deserved it.”
Goldbeard
grins. I can see in his eyes that he understands. And that he will probably
kill me because he does. He steps away from me. One of the men tosses him my
belt pouch. He kneels down, emptying out the contents. I struggle and curse.
He picks up
the
solii
first, turning it in his hand. “Well, well,
pilgrim.” He grins again at me, flipping it into his own pouch.
“Hey!” one
of the other men calls. “He was my spot! I got mineral rights on him.”
Goldbeard
only shrugs. “You get him when I say. He’s got a strike somewhere, you can pull
it out of ...” He picks up the animal foot, looks at me again, with his face
twisting. He flings the foot away. His hand falls on the
holo
.
He picks it up. He stares. “Song!” he whispers. He touches the picture to his
lips, his forehead, in a kind of ritual. And then he looks at me again with
rage in his eyes. “Where you get this?”
“She isn’t
who you think she is,” I warn him. I try to control my own outrage as his fingers
violate her image.
He cocks
his head, half frowning. “I know that,” he murmurs.
“I’ve come
to take her away.”
“Take her
away?” he roars. “Take her away?” He starts toward me. “I’ll see you in hell
‘fore you ever see Sanctuary, you god damned—” He stops as a splinter of
reflected light lodges in his eyes. He looks down at my pouch, at something
half hidden beneath its flap. He stoops over to pick it up.
The other
men have tightened their hold on me, at his signal. The pain in my shoulder
makes me dizzy, their faces swim and blur. I hear angry mutterings. Soon, any
moment, he will give the order and they’ll tear me apart. I try to lift my
head, and sweat runs into my eyes.
Goldbeard
stands gazing at the thing in his hand. A chain dangles from his fingers.
“Sibyl—?” he asks the air, with a kind of furious dismay.
“Him?
You?”
He turns to me again, letting the trefoil
pendant drop and hang above me.
One of the
others jerks at the neck of my shirt.
“He no sibyl.
He
got no tattoo here.” A knifepoint pricks my throat, stays there. He giggles as
though it is tickling him.
“Yeah, but
look at this—” Someone else’s fingers touch my forehead. “He’s got an S here.”
There is no pain as they trace the wound. “Maybe that’s how they do it on his
world.”
“You a
sibyl, like her? Like Song?”
Goldbeard
looms over me.
The trefoil twists and glitters in the air between us, reflecting life and
death, life and
death ....
“Yes,” I
gasp. “Yes! It’s mine.”
His hand
makes a fist over the chain. He stands glaring down at me for an eternity. I
wonder what I will do if he demands that I go into Transfer. “All right,” he
says at last. “Let him up.”
The others
let me go, some in obvious relief. I sit up slowly, panting. My hand goes on
its own to my forehead, to
Spadrin’s
mark. I feel only
a numb smoothness—a scar—as if it had happened years instead of days ago.
“If this is
yours, put it on.”
Goldbeard
holds the chain out to
me.
I take the
pendant in my hand. My fingers close convulsively until I feel the barbs pierce
my flesh. I pass the chain slowly over my head, feel it settle around my neck.
The outlaws shuffle back from me as I climb to my feet. I feel their
frustration, their anger, their awe. None of them will touch me now.
The reeking
motley and leather of
Goldbeard’s
massive body looms
before me; behind me
lies
I see trophies hanging from his vest—jewelry, coins, teeth with inlaid gems. In
the moment of hot silence that hangs between us, I hear a familiar tinkling
chime. My eyes find its source—the watch, my father’s antique timepiece. In my
mind I see HK tucking it into his sleeve pocket. “You fool!” I mumble. “You
fool.”