World’s End (25 page)

A flash of
silver rises from the depths of the river as sunlight spills over the canyon’s
rim. It strikes me like the clear white light of revelation. I watch the
sunlight turn the canyon walls to flame and illumine the river’s blue-green
depths. I see the silvery light-catcher clearly at last. It lies meters and
meters deep, by the dark green mouth where water flows out of the hidden heart
of the world to feed this impossible river.
Wreckage.
I identify the pieces of twisted, broken metal for what they are, and my
excitement rises. I move along the narrow stretch of shore, clamber up a pile
of broken boulders for a better view.

The metal
is old, corroded, eaten away by time and the river. Once there must have been
more of it ... a lot more. The river rolls and glitters and suddenly there is a
lot more; I glimpse a crumpled form as large as—

The phantom
is gone with another shimmer and twist of water, another blink of my eyes. I am
not even sure that I saw
it ....
I’m crazy, I see
ghosts—
Stop it, goddamn you! Analyze!
There is still wreckage in the water, but not all of it looks old. I force the
wreckage of my thoughts to consider it again. There is a piece of hull ...
a piece of hull
. Recognition is rewarded
by a dizzying rush of bliss. I shake my head, throwing off the distraction.
A piece of hull
.
I
have seen that unmistakable form somewhere, but it fits no ship I have ever
seen in the
spaceyards
. And yet the metal looks new,
now—
a trick of light and water
. There
is something marring the perfectly preserved surface: symbols, lettering, words
... but no language of any world I know. And yet, I
know
them. I strain forward; my sweating hands slide on the warm
surface of the boulder. I can almost see it ... almost see it in my mind.
Where have I seen this?

Suddenly
the memory bursts open, and gives me my answer: I see the university, the
recording—the image opening inside my head again just as it did so many years
ago ....
The language is
ST’choull
.
The language has been dead for a thousand years. And the ship is a Class Four
Estade
freighter of the Old Empire.

I slide
down from the rocks, deafened by the ululation inside me. I fight myself for a
space of clear thought; slowly it comes, and fills with more answers. A ship of
the Old Empire crashed here. It must have happened during the Empire’s fall,
when refugees fled from world to world. Probably the survivors of the crash
built the city up on the plateau. But then they abandoned
it
....
It has lain forgotten for centuries, lost in this heart of
desolation. I frown. Why would anyone do so much here, build an entire city,
and then abandon it? What could make them ...
The
Lake
.
Was the
Lake
always here?

My body is
wracked by ecstasy. I writhe against the stones as the
Lake
possesses and rewards me.
Stop
... stop
it! Leave me alone!
I plead. I claw my way back to reason; crouch
strengthless
at the foot of the boulders, gasping with helpless gratitude and frustration.
“Who cares?” I shout at my demon. “Who cares about a dead city? Who cares why
they left?” My frustration turns to killing despair, confusion; I feel my mind
falling apart again.
Gods, I really am
insane ....
I bury my face in my hands.
It’s no use
.

“The clues
were all there. They’d been there all along, of course,” a voice says
ironically; speaking in
Sandhi
, the language of my
home. It is a very familiar voice.

I open my
eyes. A ghost haloed in blue stands before me, with a face so familiar that for
a moment I am dumbstruck by the sight of it. My father—as he must have looked
before I was born. But then I realize that it is not my father ... it is me.

Me
—and yet a stranger, years older.
A trefoil shines like a star among
the medals and honors that crust my uniform. Seeing them, I seem to know when
and where I was given each one, even though I’ve never seen them before. I sit
watching as my other self goes on speaking, smoothly, with almost cynical
ease—as I have never been able to speak before a crowd. He gazes at me but
through me, toward his phantom audience: “... though at the time I didn’t
consider myself lucky to be in the position ....” He smiles, but his eyes are
hiding secrets.

I—he lifts
his hands. There are no scars on his wrists. My heart constricts. He pauses,
waiting for laughter. I hear the laughter inside my head, and wonder what I
would see behind me if I turned to look. I do not turn to look. “I remember how
I told myself at the start that someone would find the answer, if they’d only
ask a sibyl the right questions ....” He glances down, grimacing at some
private
memory,
and his face—my face—begins to fade.

“Wait!
Wait!” I reach out, reach through him. “What questions?” My hand meets solid
flesh, closes over an arm. I jerk back from the unexpected contact.

“BZ?” a
hoarse voice murmurs in
Sandhi
. “BZ, is that you? Is
it really you?” A familiar
Kharemoughi
face hangs
before mine again—familiar, and yet profoundly changed.

“HK—” I
whisper incredulously. I touch the face, and my hand confirms his reality.
“HK!”
I scramble to my feet, and grab him by the shoulders.
“Holy Hands of
Edhu
!
Ye gods ... I
never thought I’d find you alive.”

He sags
against me, his legs going out from under him, as if the shock is too much for
him. I lower him to the ground and crouch down beside him. “You ... you... what
are you doing here?” he asks almost plaintively. “I hardly knew you.”

“I came
searching for you.” It is almost too painful to keep looking at him. His once
fleshy face is gaunt and haggard. His body is filthy and covered with bruises,
his clothes are in rags. There is a metal collar around his neck, an oozing
sore on his leg. I wonder morbidly how I must look to him.

“You came?”
he asks again. “You came here to find us?” His voice rises. “You fool, you
fool—you’re the biggest fool of all!” Irritation prickles inside me. His eyes
catch on the trefoil dangling at my chest; he grabs it. “You told them you were
a sibyl? Is that how you did it? When they find out, they’ll kill you—” He
drops the trefoil, his hands trembling.

“No they
won’t,” I say, as calmly as I can. I grip his shoulders. “I really am a sibyl,
HK.”

“You?
A sibyl?”
His eyes focus on me again. “You said you couldn’t
... you never ... How? When? Why?”

“Song.
Song infected me.” I look down, feeling my face flush, as if he could read how
it happened in my eyes.
“When I came here.”

“Song!”
His eyes bore into my head. “Then you must be crazy, just like she is!” He
pulls away from me. “I saw you when I came down here, you looked crazy. You
were talking to yourself—”

To myself
.
For a moment I don’t realize that he means
talking to the air.
Talking
to myself.
I saw myself ... I
saw my own future. And I will be—I am—perfectly sane
. I begin to laugh, for
the first time in months, or maybe years. “I’m sane!” I grab HK again, shaking
him, convulsed with laughter. “I really am, HK! It’s going to be all right!” I
realize that I am shouting into his cringing face, and try to control myself. I
was right to believe in myself, right to go on struggling for my sanity, right
to go on living—Relief and pride fill me, and are all my own.
I swear on my father’s grave that I will
never turn my back on the hard road again.

“HK, listen
to me,” I say, more evenly. He averts his eyes; I make him look at me.
“Something’s happened to me, and I don’t really know how to deal with it,
that’s all. But I’m learning. I’m going to be all right. Somehow it was meant
to happen.” I’d never wanted to be a sibyl, never even imagined I was fit to
try ...
but I am fit
. I take the
trefoil in my hands again, feeling its treacherous beauty, barbed with pain.
Now, after all I’ve done ... how is it
possible?
I swallow the choking tightness in my throat, suddenly
remembering the moment when I swallowed the
solii
,
just before Song infected me.
“Do you
know the truth yet?”
she asked me; and said, when I shook my head,
“You will.”

HK sits
watching me silently. I can’t tell what he is thinking now.

“What about
SB?” I look up, trying to convince us both that I am really thinking clearly.
“Where is he? Is he all right?”

“All right?”
HK’s mouth twists. He scratches under his rags. I try to remember a
time in our youth when I even saw him perspire. “SB is as all right as anyone
here. He’s a tool.” His voice turns bitter.

“What’s
that?”

“A slave with special privileges.
Anubah
trusts him
... and he knows enough about the equipment to make
himself
useful.” HK’s hands tighten into fists.

“What about
you? You studied at the
Rislanne
—”

“I barely
know how to use a terminal!” He glares at me. “You know that; you were always
pointing it out to me. Do you really think Techs are born smarter than everyone
else? Do you really still believe we were on top because we deserved to be?”

“No.” I
glance down at my wrists, and shake my head. “I’m not crazy anymore.”

HK gets up.
“You were crazy to come here,” he says.

“Yes.” I
watch the water move. “I know.”

“I have to
get back.” He picks up two pails and fills them clumsily at the river’s edge.
Somehow the water lies obediently inside the buckets. He stands looking back at
me. “If you want SB, I’ll take you to him.” He starts away, limping. I catch up
with him and take the buckets as we begin to climb the path. He leans heavily
on my shoulder, until I can hardly keep my balance. My own feet leave a bloody
trail behind us.

“HK,” I
say, “I’m going to get us out of here.”

He looks at
me bleakly. “Don’t say that. Nobody ever gets out of here.”

“We will,”
I promise. But the Lake stirs inside me, and suddenly I know that I will never
leave this place alive, I will never be really free or in control of myself
again—unless I solve the mystery that lives in my head, answer the riddle, ask
the right questions ....

“You see?”
HK mutters. “You know it too.”

I don’t
answer. We reach the top of the cliff, panting and giddy from the pitiless
heat, and start into the town. I try not to flinch as ghosts walk through me,
hoping HK doesn’t notice. My
own ghost
...
I
did
see myself, safe and
sane, in the future.
All in blue.
The
way I saw my mother, in the past, in red.
Song in red;
my brothers in blue.
As if I saw my own memories made into
ghosts ....

But how can
I remember things that haven’t happened yet? How can I believe such a thing,
how can I know that they aren’t simply delusions? My confidence crumbles.
They’re consistent!
my
mind insists. Past and future are always consistent colors—
Why
? And what about the rest of the ghosts—whose memories are they?

Those
things mean something together, they are too familiar. I stop in my tracks.
The
Lake
turned blue
. As I slipped into Transfer there on Song’s stage, I thought I
saw
Fire
Lake
changing from red to
blue ....
Time dilation.
The visual
effects are like the changing colors of space seen from a ship approaching the
speed of light. The universe shifted toward blue ahead, shifted red behind. The
color of whole galaxies approaching or receding from our own at near
lightspeed
, in the infinity of
space ....
What does time look like from the other
side?

Paradox.
I’m living inside a paradox, time is flowing both ways—
I feel ecstasy set fire to every
nerve
.—No, wait—

“BZ!
Goddamn it—!”

I am
sprawled on the ground; I realize that HK has pushed me down. I sit up, shaking
my head. I am sitting in a puddle.

“You
spilled the water!” he whines. “You spilled it all, damn you! Now I’ll have to
go back down ....” He wipes his nose with his hand, mumbling.

I get up,
wiping my hands on my pants, leaving rust red smears of grit. I can’t
understand why he is upset, when my own problem is so much greater. “I’m so
close
!” My hands make fists. “I need a
place to think and be quiet—” I look away, toward Song’s tower.

“SB will
kill me! You selfish ... you spilled it. You go back and get more.” HK waves
his hand.