“Damn it, I know all that. What’s that got to do with Hahn?” Kullervo insisted. “What’s it got to do with her crazy daughter?”
“It belongs to Song. It was the original sample of the stardrive plasma that 1 brought out of World’s End with me. She had it. I brought her out too, along with my brothers… . I went in to find them. That’s why I was there, in the first place.” It sounded like an excuse. He glanced at Kullervo, to see if he had noticed. “I met Hahn here in the town; she asked me if I would look for her daughter.”
“And you found all of them, out in that … ?” Kullervo jerked his head in the vague direction of World’s End, as words failed him. “That’s harder to believe than that you found stardrive out there.”
“I suppose so,” Gundhalinu said, half smiling. “Although at the time I imagined that it would be simple.”
” “The gods take care of fools’ …” Kullervo murmured.
Gundhalinu grimaced. “Maybe so. As it turned out, by blind luck or otherwise we all ended up in the same place—a place called Sanctuary, by the Lake itself.”
“There’s a town out there?” Kullervo said in disbelief.
“There was. On an island of red rock in the middle of the Lake. It was built by the survivors of the ship that crashed there at the end of the Old Empire—the one the stardrive plasma escaped from. The gods only know what became of the original inhabitants. It was full of murderers and lunatics when I got there. …” His voice faded; he drank water, aware that Kullervo was looking at him strangely. “My brothers were prisoners there—slaves. Song was its queen.”
Kullervo laughed, a strangled sound that was more incredulous than amused.
“She was in communion with Fire Lake. She kept the people there protected, more or less, from its randomness.” Gundhalinu looked up, facing him directly again Kullervo only nodded, showing no surprise now. “It was able to communicate with her, after a fashion, because she was a sibyl. I have a theory—”
“That all the forms of Old Empire technovirus still in existence have a single common denominator,” Kullervo said. “Their differences are simply a reflection of how they were programmed.”
Gundhalinu stared at him. “Exactly,” he said.
Kullervo laughed and nodded, his eyes shining. “You’re dead right, Gundhalinueshkrad.”
“You sound like you know that for certain.”
Kullervo shrugged and ate a rind. “What we’ve done here proves it … at least to me. I’ve been working on analyzing and charting the differences to a degree where we can predictably reprogram the basic substance for our own uses. What we’ve done, and are about to do, with the stardrive is a first step. The options are almost infinite. If only we could recreate the kind of precision they must have had …”
“If we’re successful at Fire Lake, we’ll have proof that more funding and more effort should go into your work when you return to Kharemough.”
Kullervo looked back at him blankly, as if the comment were a complete non sequitur; as if his own thoughts had drifted into alien country again. “Yes, I suppose so,” he murmured. He rubbed his arms, pushing his sleeves up toward his elbows.
Gundhalinu froze, staring at the profusion of colors and patterns that started at Kullervo’s wrists and went spiraling up his forearms. Tattooing. The only place he had ever seen tattooing like that was on the arms of criminals. He looked up again, found Kullervo staring back at him.
Kullervo’s long-fingered hands twitched, as if they wanted to pull his sleeves down; but he did not. “I got the tattoos on Samathe,” he said, “when I was … young.” He shrugged. “It’s not what you think.” He held out an arm so that Gundhalinu could see it clearly; see that the intricate geometric designs flowing one into another like music made visible were not the crude pictorials he had seen on underworld thugs. “I liked to look at them. …”
“They’re very beautiful,” Gundhalinu said softly. He was reminded of the fluid patterns of adhani. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Why do you keep them covered up?”
Kullervo studied the tattoos as if he were hypnotized; but Gundhalinu thought he saw the younger man flush. “So that everybody at the Project won’t look at me the way you just did.” Kullervo pulled his sleeves down again.
Gundhalinu watched the designs disappear, his embarrassment oddly mingled with regret. He said nothing more, waiting.
Kullervo’s attention returned to him abruptly; Gundhalinu read non sequitur again in Kullervo’s half frown. “If the Lake communicated in some fashion with Song, what about you?” Kullervo gestured at the trefoil he wore, as if there had been no discussion at all about tattooing a moment earlier.
Gundhalinu forced his mind to retune to Kullervo’s sudden change of frequency. He touched the trefoil absently, wonderingly; as he still did often, every day. “Yes. It communicated with me too. It forced me to think about it until I … understood.”
“What’s it really like out there—World’s End?” Kullervo twisted the ring he wore on his thumb; a ring of silver metal set with two soliis, that Gundhalinu realized suddenly was probably a wedding ring.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I can’t explain it. … Maybe it’s different for everyone who goes out there.” He lifted his hands. “Anyway, you’ll see for yourself, soon enough. Gods, look at the time. We’d better get some sleep before the night’s gone … if we can.” He smiled and lifted his beaker to Kullervo, for once feeling the kind of comfortable companionship with him that had been almost perversely missing from their relationship these past months. Kullervo raised his own mug, smiling wryly in return, and drained it. “I’ll share that ride home with you now,” Gundhalinu said.
Kullervo nodded, and used his remote to call a cab. He stood up, stretching, rubbing his neck. “Tell me,” he said, “do you still hear the Lake when you go out there?”
Gundhalinu hesitated, nodded. “I still hear it. And I still have some effect on it. Expeditions I head are … safer. But the Lake is—insane, for want of a better word. It flows in and out of our particular continuum at will, there’s no hard-and-fast reality around it. That’s why it’s been so damned difficult even to collect a sample.” He glanced up, as the cab they had ordered drifted down onto the street beside them. “Reede. …” Kullervo looked back at him. “When I’m around the Lake I—get a little disoriented sometimes. It’s hard to concentrate, there’s so much static in my head.” He took a deep breath, feeling himself flush as he went on, “I’m glad you’ll be with me on this trip. I’m glad I’ll have someone I can count on.”
Kullervo “s smile came back. “We need each other, on this trip… .”He looked down at his wedding ring; his smile quirked oddly. “You can count on that.”
NUMBER FOUR World’s End
Reede settled back in his bed in the predawn blackness and sighed. He felt the water of death renewing him, relieving the loneliness and the fear, the countless almost subliminal sensations of discomfort that had been plucking at his nerve endings. It was the closest thing to a drug rush that he could experience anymore. He savored the monstrously deceptive sense of well-being it gave him, the sense that he could do anything, that World’s End itself was no match for his intelligence, and the human beings who so trustingly traveled into it with him were no match for his cunning. He closed his eyes, letting go as he felt sleep settle over him like a warm blanket… The call signal on his remote buzzed loudly in the soft, perfect silence, jarring him out of almost-oblivion. He swore and sat up, dazed, still half dreaming that he had rolled over on some gigantic insect in his sleep. He swore again as he realized where he was, and what the sound meant. By the time he had pushed himself off the bed he was wide awake, seeing dim light through the imperfections of the flimsy window opaquers. He ordered the lights on and groped for the remote lying on his bedside table.