World’s End (19 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
“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.
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.
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 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 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
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.
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
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 any 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 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 to my lips. I drink it all.
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
everything ....” Moon’s eyes 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
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 you!” she shrieks, as if she hates me. “I hate you—” she
cries, as if she loves me. “I love you ....” And she is not seeing me at all,
as her eyes close and her mouth finds mine hungrily.
I rip at
her clothes and my own until there is nothing against our flesh but each
other’s flesh. Her whole body is dyed with intricate designs. Her hands still
punish me, flailing, raking my back; fury and desire are joined inside her the
way I want to feel her body joined with mine. Her soft, open lips burn my
cracked and broken ones with hot kisses; her tongue enters my mouth. And when
her hand finds the throbbing life below my belly she seizes it with fierce urgency.
I moan. My
hand fondles her breast, while the other lies buried between her legs, parting
them as I probe the liquid depths of her secret places. Her body bucks and
heaves, urging, demanding, as if there is no time ... but I know there is all
the time in the world now. Our time has come; everything will be right again
for us—
We roll,
struggling, tangling, absorbing and exploring each other until there are no
secrets left. Her mouth travels down my body, licking away sweat and grime,
devouring me, as she forces my face away from hers—down, down, until it is
buried in her moist warmth and I taste the bitter sweetness of her. Her body
rises like a wave, cresting, breaking, and ecstasy bursts out of her like a
scream of pain ... another ... and another.
And then,
gasping, she seizes my manhood. Her nails are buried
tormentingly
in my flesh as she pulls me over on top of her. I feel my aching hardness slide
into the wet folds; I thrust fiercely, burying myself deep inside her. She
wraps her legs around me and I plunge ever deeper into her darkness. I thrust
harder and faster, driven by the need to obliterate all memory.
And in my
mind a frantic voice is crying that this is nothing like the last time, she is
nothing like the last time—
But
it is lost, lost in the
fire. I feel the life-force building inside
me,
feel
the burning well up in my loins until there is nothing left of me except my
need—
I release
with a shuddering cry, and as I do she pulls me down on top of her, crushing my
lips against her own. “Save me, save me—” she whimpers. My tongue enters her
waiting mouth.
Her teeth
close on my tongue, tearing it, and her saliva mingles with my blood.
“No—” My
cry of pleasure becomes a cry of fear. I try to break free in the sudden
excruciating moment when I realize what she has done. Fire in my blood, icicles
in my bones, it is too late—I feel myself falling, still falling and falling,
through rapture into oblivion.
The voices
wake me, a thousand voices murmuring, shouting,
whispering
to me. I open my eyes; my body is rigid with terror. I am in a room, a strange
red-walled room, sprawled on a bed, naked and alone. My body is covered with
whorls and stripes of reddish-brown stain. I sit up in a spasm, shaking my
head, but the voices remain, jabbering and calling. I hunch over, hiding my
nakedness, even though I cannot see who mocks me. I am sick with hunger. My
body aches and smarts, my tongue is sore and swollen in my mouth. I whimper,
covering my ears with my hands, but the voices are inside my head. “Leave me
alone!”
Someone
enters the room—a woman, but it is hard to see her through the voices. I feel
my own face under my
hands,
reach out to her like a
blind man. I do not feel her touch my hand, she does not touch my hand. But I
know her face.
I know her face—!
I
shout the voices down until I can name it. I’ve seen it a hundred times, but
only in a picture.
Song.
This is Song.
And last night I saw her
and did not see her as our bodies joined.
Like
a dream—last night ... last night ...
The voices are drowning me; I choke
and gasp.
Song’s face
moves close to mine. I read her
lips,
her voice is
lost among a thousand voices: “False sibyl, now you are a real one. Now you
know what I know. And now my mother knows what she did to me!” She laughs,
holding the trefoil that I wear up in front of my eyes.
I try to
make words with my swollen tongue, but all I do is groan.
Gods, oh gods ... infected ... I’m insane!
I push her away and get
to my feet, staggering across the room to the window. I look out over the town
and see
the glaring blue sky. The thousand voices in my head roar even louder at the
sight of it. I fall to my knees, banging my head against the stone sill.
Song is
behind me, pulling me up again, shouting into my face. “You hear it? You hear
the voice of the
can eat
your
mind. It will eat you
alive, unless you’re stronger than it is.” She pushes me to the window. “You
belong to