He sighed. "If only SB had gone in thy place; as he should have, years ago. If only he had been born with thy sense of honor, or HK with thy intelligence. . . ." He looked up at me. "Or if thou had been born first." His eyes held mine, searching.
I took a deep breath, suddenly finding the courage to say what I had never dared to say before.
"Father, I
know the wisdom of the laws. They were intended to keep society in the control of the ones most capable of running it well. But... but here in our family, they don't
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WORLD S END
. . . they don't seem ..." I went on in a rush, "By our sainted ancestors, Father, can't thou disinherit them? It would be justice--"
"Enough!" He pushed away from the mantel, rigid with anger. "You've said enough! It's not in my hands.
You will not mention it again."
You. Not thou. It stung like a slap. "Forgive me, Father."
I bowed, whispering, "I had no right." I kept my burning face averted. "May I have . . . your permission to leave you?"
"No."
I started as I felt his hands on my shoulders. I looked up into his dark eyes as clear as garnets. He had been an old man when I was born, but now for the first time in
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my life I saw that he was old.
"Thou are all I have that makes me proud," he said, and he hugged me, for the first time since my childhood.
I was so surprised that I almost pulled away. "I would give up my life for thee, gladly ... but I cannot go against the laws." And yet his eyes implored me to understand something more--something that was beyond his power, but not beyond mine.
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"I know," I said, answering only his words. I looked down. I still felt his touch, even after his hands dropped away. I gazed out the window at the gnarled gray stone of the pinnacle on which the main house sat. I felt the overwhelming weight of a thousand years of tradition pressing down on me, immobilizing me. "I--I would like to go down to the places of our ancestors now, and meditate."
He nodded, his face stern with disappointment. He turned away from me, leaning heavily against the mantel.
"Yes. Say a prayer for us all."
I started for the door. He called suddenly, "Where will thou be stationed?"
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"Tiamat."
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JOAN D. VINGE
"Tiamat!" He was himself again as I looked back at him. "The people there are little more than barbarians.
I can arrange a better assignment for thee, one where at least thou will be dealing with civilized citizens--"
I shook my head. "No, Father. I chose this myself."
Because it had seemed the most exotic, the most alien, among the choices I had: a world like something out of the Old Empire romances I read constantly.
Tiamat was a world of water and ice, whose small population lived mostly in a state of bucolic backwardness.
There was only one major city on the entire world, a notorious tourist stopover--a fantastic relic of the Old
Empire, called Carbuncle "because it was both a jewel and a fester." The Hegemony controlled Tiamat directly
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for a hundred and fifty years at a time, leaving the natives to fend for themselves for another century as Tia mat's twin suns entered the periapsis of their orbit around the black hole that was its stargate. Then gravitational instabilities closed the Gate to starship travel for a hundred years, and anyone left behind faced a lifetime of exile. Half the population of the planet became exiles, too, as they moved to higher latitudes to escape their suns' increased radiation. And the ritual of the Change sacrificed the Snow Queen, who had ruled for a hundred and fifty years, to the sea the Tiamatans worshipped.
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The Hegemony wanted Tiamat, and wanted it completely under their control, for only one reason: the water of life. The longevity drug was distilled from the blood of mers, bioengineered creatures of the Old Empire that survived only in Tiamat's seas. The drug was extremely rare, so expensive that even for someone like my father it was only a dream. It made Tiamat worth keeping, and it gave me a chance to see a living city of the Empire. "It's my only chance to see the world where they find the water of life, before its Gate closes. And when it does close, I'll be reassigned. . . . It's not as if I'll
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WORLD S END
be there for the rest of my life. I'll return home on leave--"
He smiled, to silence me. "I know thou will serve honorably, wherever thou go." The chiming of his antique watch made him glance down. His smile became an expression I couldn't put a name to. He took the watch from the pocket in his sash, where he always kept it.
And that was the last time I saw it, until the day I saw it in my brother's hand. . . .
The junkyard and the clamor and the heat reclaimed me again--I almost welcomed them. I put the trefoil into my belt pouch, along with my brothers' picture. I glanced at the holo of Song. I saw a girl-woman wearing the familiar sibyl sign, with dark eyes and a mass of black hair. Somehow I hadn't expected it to be black. I stared at the image for a long moment, trying to find something in her face to tell me why she'd done what she had. Her eyes were disturbingly alive, as if even her
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image could see into other worlds. As if another woman, another sibyl, with hair the color of moonlight, could look out through her eyes in search of me. I jammed the holo into my pouch.
I don't know what to make of this. Things seem to fall into my hands even as they're slipping through my fingers. Just when it all seems hopeless, I'm given what I need--just as I was on Tiamat. And just when I think
I'm safe, I remember Tiamat.
I remember that night, as if it were last night. I haven't thought of it in years. I wanted so much to forget that
I really believed I had. I haven't even wanted a woman, since. . . . But tonight, gods--I ache for the feel of her body against mine.
Damn it all! Maybe I am crazy.
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dW
e've begun our journey at last, for better or
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worse. We've been traveling upriver into
World's End for nearly four days now.
Ang wasn't able to beg, borrow, or steal the grid I
needed to get the rover's antigrav unit working, despite his assurances. That would have made everything a damn sight easier . . . but why should anything be easy when it all depends on the Company? In the end, Ang just seemed to run out of patience--as if he had to begin, as if he had to get back into the wilderness, no matter how he had to travel.
We've made the first part of the journey by water, our only other alternative. At least I was able to make sure this derelict is watertight. Thank the gods it held together
--I was in no mood for bailing, let alone taking a swim in that foul yellow fluid. The stench was nauseating:
The air purifier still needs overhauling. Spadrin actually got sick to his stomach from the smell and the motion of the water. Nothing seemed to bother Ang-- not even the jungle pressing down to the shore on either bank, spilling into the river with a kind of frenzy, as if it were trying to reach us. It floats on the water surface, rotting and stinking and gray, like the flesh of corpses.