And he was BZ Gundhalinu, third son of a rigid, Technocrat father—Survey member, Police inspector … traitor, failed suicide. He had gone into the wilderness called World’s End in search of his brothers, to save their lives, to salvage the family’s honor … to salvage his own honor, or end his own life. There he had found Fire Lake, and in the grip of its tortured reality he had lost all proof of his own reality … had been taken for a lover by a madwoman, a woman driven insane by the sibyl virus.
In the heat of lust she had infected him. And he had become a sibyl, and it had driven him sane; he had discovered at last the secret order at the heart of the chaos called Fire Lake… . And he had brought his brothers back, and given the secret of Fire Lake to the Hegemony. They had made him a hero and honored him, and respected him and kidnapped and imprisoned him and shown him the truth within truth… .
“—like he’s gone into Transfer, for gods’ sakes.” Someone shook him, not gently, driving the words through his darkness like lines of coherent light.
“What? How? That’s never happened—” Someone else peeled back his eyelid, letting in light; let it go again.
“—got no control, only been a sibyl for a few weeks. No real training either.” Their voices echoed blindingly across the spectrum, making his eyes tear, yet so impossibly distant that they seemed unreachable.
“No formal training? It’s a miracle he functions at all.”
“He is a Kharemoughi—”
A snort of laughter. “He’s a failed suicide, too; which meant he was better off dead by your count, until he discovered stardrive plasma in Fire Lake. Neither of those things has a pee-whit to do with why he’s here … or why he’s a Hero of the Hegemony either, probably.” The words were clearer now, sliding down the spectrum from light to sound, growing easier to comprehend, closer to his center.
“Kindly keep your lowborn snideries to a—”
“Quiet! Remember where you are for gods’ sakes, and what we’re here for. We haven’t got all night. How can we get him out of Transfer?”
“We can’t. Once the net’s got him, he’s gone.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen. Where did it send him? What if he can’t pull out of it?”
“By the Aurant! Don’t even say it.”
“There’s got to be a way to reach him. Use the light pencil. Maybe if you really burn him, threaten his life, the net will let him go.”
“That won’t …” Gundhalinu drew in a shuddering breath and squeezed the words out, “won’t be necessary.” He forced his eyes open, was blinded for his efforts, and shut them again with a curse, turning his face away from the light.
Someone’s arm slid under his shoulders, raising him up carefully until he was almost sitting. Someone else held a cup to his lips. He drank. It was bandro; the strong, raw flavor of the spices and stimulant made his mouth bum.
He opened his eyes again, blinking in the glare, and lifted his hands, as he suddenly realized that he could, that he was sitting unaided, freed from his bonds.
The circle of faceless inquisitors still ringed him, at the limits of the light that shone down on him alone. He shook his head, rubbing his eyes, not entirely certain now whether this reality was any more real than the ones he had just inhabited these past minutes … hours … ? He had no idba how long he had been lost. He was thirsty and he needed to urinate, but that could be nerves, or the drugs they had used on him. He pulled his robe together, covering himself, and fastened the clasp almost defiantly.
“Welcome—home, Gundhalinu,” one of the figures said solemnly.
Gundhalinu found himself searching for a hand that held a mug of bandro, anything that would distinguish any one of them from another … but even the mug had vanished. “Have I been away?” he asked tightly, his voice rasping.
“You can answer that for yourself,” another figure said. “I trust your journey was enlightening?”
“Very,” he answered, using the single word like a knife.
“Then you understand who we are … and what you have become, now?”
He looked from one flaming, featureless face to another, and shook his head. “No,” he muttered, refusing to give them anything, his anger and indignation still fresh and hot inside him.
“Don’t lie to us!” One of the figures stepped toward him, with the light pencil appearing suddenly in its hand. Gundhalinu flinched back involuntarily. “Don’t ever underestimate the seriousness of our resolve, or of your situation. If we are not certain—now or ever—that you are with us, then you are against us, and you will pay. Sibyl or not, it is simple necessity. The group must survive. You saw how easily we brought you here. Nothing escapes us. Do you understand?”
Gundhalinu nodded silently.
“You went into Transfer during the interface. Was that intentional? Where did you go?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” he said. He looked down at the reassuring familiarity of his own hands, the skin smooth and brown, scattered with pale freckles. “I wasn’t aware that you hadn’t done it to me yourself. I don’t know where I was. … I was—history.” He shrugged, turning his palms up.
“You experienced an overview of the origins of the sibyl network, and its ties to historical Survey.”
“Yes.” He looked up again, facing the flaming darkness of the face before him. “I was … Ilmarinen.” The archaic name felt strangely alien on his tongue.
“Ilmarinen—?” someone muttered, and was waved silent.
“I see,” his questioner murmured; but he sensed from the tone that he had not made the anticipated response.
“I understand now,” he pushed on, before they could lay any more questions in front of him like pressure-sensitive mines, “the link between Survey and the sibyls.” His mind spun giddy for a moment as the full implications hit him. If it was all true … And somehow he was sure that it was. “Then it is true that there are higher orders within Survey, inner circles hidden even from our own members?”
“Now at least you’re asking the right questions,” the questioner said.
Gundhalinu let his feet slide off the edge of the table, so that he was sitting more comfortably, more like an equal. He did not attempt to put a foot on the floor, actually challenging their territory. “I have another question, that may not be the one you want me to ask… . Why? Why are you still necessary? Sibyls are no longer persecuted.” Except on Tiamat.
His questioner shrugged. “In all times and places there are sociohistonca! developments which threaten to impede or even destroy humanity’s progress. Even before the sibyls, Survey was dedicated to helping humanity grow. To giving our people space, both physical and mental. It has always been that way; it always will be. We are dedicated to doing the greatest good for the most people, wherever possible … as unobtrusively as possible.”
Gundhalinu rubbed his arms inside the sleeves of his robe. “But you’d kill me just like that if I oppose you?”
The questioner chuckled; the distorted sound was like water going down a dram. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Commander Gundhalinu.”
The light shining down on him went out, leaving him in sudden darkness, ringed by glowing holes that sucked his vision into the night, Black Gates opening on countless otherwheres or endless nightmare, myriad lights like the stars of an alien sky… . He sat motionless, hypnotized, seeing ancient starfields through the eyes of ancient Ilmannen; the ghost-haunted hellshine of Fire Lake—
And then, one by one, the lights began to go out, until the darkness surrounding him was complete.
Abruptly there was light again, all around him this time; letting him see at last the room in which he was held prisoner—whitewashed, windowless, lined with portable carriers which could have held anything, or nothing—and the three men who remained in the room with him. He had counted nearly a dozen figures before. He wondered where the others had disappeared to, so quickly.