World’s End (28 page)

We leave
the skeleton tower unchallenged, and I search for a way back through the
treacherous light and-shadow alleyways of the town. I get lost half a dozen
times before I find the place where I left my brothers, but nobody I meet is
crazy enough to challenge an armed man carrying a body.

I hesitate
when I reach the doorway that I think is
Anubah’s
.
The rooms inside are dark, but a group of men is laughing and gaming a little
way down the alley, by the light of a solar torch.

A figure
emerges from the doorway, and I stiffen.

“BZ?”

“SB!”
I
start toward the door, but he holds up his hand.

“Quiet,
Anubah’s
inside, sleeping.” He gestures me down against the
building wall. “Thank the gods,” he mutters. “I thought you were never coming
back.”

“I said I
always do my duty.”

He frowns.
I lay Song down beside me as carefully as I can; sit back against the wall,
with my arms and legs trembling. I wonder dimly how long it has been since I’ve
eaten anything.

“Is that
her?” SB asks.

“Yes.”

He grunts
something that sounds like “Idiot,” and turns to the doorway again. “HK,” he
whispers.

HK emerges,
carrying a small case. They crouch down beside me. “Here are the tools.” SB
takes the case from HK’s hands. “Get these blocks off us. Can you short them
out?”

“Not if you
want to keep your heads. Can’t you get the control box?”

“No. I
don’t know where
Anubah
keeps it—” He breaks off,
lowering his head as someone strides by.

When the
stranger is past, I say, “I’ve got the gun working. Let’s just get out of
here.”

“No! I want
this off. I want to leave here like a man, with honor.” He grips my arm. “You
understand.” His eyes burn holes in the darkness.

“All right.”
I pick through the tools in the dim light reflecting off the walls.
“It’s too dark here ... wait.” I
unwrap
the fire
globe. Its restless glow washes their faces with warm radiance.

“What is
it?” HK whispers.
“Lava?”

“A drop of
Fire
Lake
.”
I look up, grinning with elation.
“It’s
stardrive
, HK! The whole damned lake!” The real
significance of my discovery is only beginning to penetrate.

“What are
you talking about?” SB snaps. “Shut up with that crazy talk, and get us free.”

“I’m not
crazy.” I meet his eyes. “I’ve discovered what
Fire
Lake
really is. A ship of the Old Empire crashed here, and nobody knew it. Its drive
has been breeding here, uncontained, for a thousand years. That’s what causes
all the abnormal phenomena. Think of it, SB! Think of what this will mean to
the Hegemony!”

“You’re
sure?” he asks. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Gods ...”
HK sighs. “And we’re the only ones who know.”

“All the more reason to get out of here alive.”
I switch on the magnifier, and
watch the invisible tracery of the blocks’ circuits glow on its surface. I
follow the
microfine
pathways inward more by instinct
than by sight.
“All right!
... Give me a tone box.” HK
puts it into my hand. I press a code sequence—half audible notes, half silent
to my ears. The pinprick red lights on both their collars wink out.
“Deactivated.
You’re free. Now come on, let’s—”

“One more
thing,” SB says grimly. He picks up the beamer before I realize what he is
doing, and disappears through the doorway. I curse. “What’s he—?”

A bellow of fury, a low voice speaking.
A flash of light, and a scream—

The men
down the alleyway look up as SB bursts out through the doorway. Some of them
start to get up, or call out
Anubah’s
name.

“Now I feel
like a man.” SB grins at HK, holding up the gun.

“You killed
him?” I whisper.

“Sure.” He
nods. “He deserved it.”

I look away
mutely, too many voices in my head.

“Gods, SB,”
HK whines too loudly, “they know what you did!” He points down the alley,
jittering with panic.

“
Quiet
—” I mutter, but he grabs the fire
globe and begins to hobble away. Someone shouts at us. SB’s arm comes up with
the gun. “No!” I say, but he fires wildly. I see weapons come out, and the
others start for us in a mob. I pick up Song and we all run. She is a dead
weight, but rage at my brothers gives me more strength than fear does.

The
twisting alleyways, the maze of steps and ladders, are our enemy and our
friend. As we run I fix an image in my mind of the landing flat, the waiting
rovers—
escape, freedom
—willing myself
to see them ahead.

And
abruptly I do, almost as if I have the power to twist time and space. With the
last of my strength I run out onto the field. But in the hard glare of the
lights I see more outlaws, and
Goldbeard
, roaring,
pointing at us—

“There! He
has her! He stole Song!”

SB fires at
him and
Goldbeard
crumples, but the rest come toward
us in a raging mass.

“Leave her,
drop her,” SB gasps, pulling HK by the arm. “It’s her they want! They’ll tear
us apart!”

I run for
the nearest rover instead, and drag Song’s body on board. SB and HK throw
themselves through the doorway after me. I seal the door, and fumble the remote
into my ear. I gasp an override command, collapsing into the pilot’s seat. The
control panel comes to life. I lift off, hearing HK and SB grunt as the takeoff
dumps them against the back wall. I can barely keep my leaden hands on the
controls as we rise from the plateau into the darkness.

Song stirs
at last, lying beside me on the floor. Whimpering in confusion, she pulls
herself up the panel to look out into the night over
Fire
Lake
.
“No ....” she murmurs. She looks at me and begins to shout, “No. No! Take me
back!” Her fists strike the panel.

I ignore
her, wiping sweat from my eyes as I count the images on the screen that are
outlaw flyers on our tail. This rover is too old, too slow, too clumsy, to
outrun them all. And if they force us
down ...

Song begins
to shriek hysterically. My head fills with noise, with the wail of a thousand
memories ... with a blazing explosion of energy. Below us the
Lake
explodes in sudden gouts of fire. The rover reels and plunges as the shock
waves batter it. And with dazzled eyes I see the plateau that holds Sanctuary
shimmer, see it begin to crumble—see it flash out of existence, as if it had
never been.

But my
disbelieving eyes still show me our pursuers below, closing,
closing
....

I shut my
eyes and concentrate on the impossible: a clear sky, no pursuit, a new day,
with
Fire
Lake
far behind us—

“No!” Song
screams, one last time.

What
happened?” SB is shouting. “Sainted grandfathers, what happened? Where are we?”

I sit
staring out at a perfectly clear sky, darkening upward from palest blue to an
indigo zenith. World’s End flashes by beneath us, falling into the past. There
is nothing on the screen. It is a new day. And the silence inside my head is
deafening. The
Lake
is gone. “SB ...
take
the controls ....” I lock the rover on course.

He slides
into the seat as I get up. My legs give way; I have to hang on to the panel for
support. I look down at Song, sitting rigidly in the copilot’s seat.
“Song?”
Her eyes are open, staring, but she does not move. I
shake her gently. She falls back into the seat, completely limp, still staring.
“Song!”
My own voice shouts in my ears. The
Lake
is gone, and the silence is almost
unbearable ....
Gods,
what have I done?

“What the
hell happened?” SB says again, pulling at my arm.
“BZ—?”

“The
Lake
,” I say, and for a long moment it is all I can say.
“It let us go.”

I feel them
look at each other, and at me. “Then everything you said is really true,” HK
breathes.

“Where are
we?” SB looks down at the readouts on the panel.

“On a
course that will get us back to civilization in about half a day.”
Half a day’s painless, normal flight.

My hands
touch my face. I feel a kind of amazement. We’ve survived.

“You mean
the
Lake
is alive?” HK is sitting behind me.
He holds up the globe, peering in at the droplet of
stardrive
.

I nod,
relieved to see that he still has it.

“And you
can talk to it?”

“I did.
In a way.”
SB looks back at me. HK stares with childish awe
as I fall into a seat beside him. “I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t expect it
hears me, either.” I feel empty, bloodless. I glance at Song again.

“Thank the
gods you didn’t drop that.” SB looks over his shoulder at the globe.

“Drop
this?” HK shakes his filthy head, holding it up. “I’d die first. I’d kill
first. Ye gods, SB, do you know how much this is worth?” He giggles. “Nobody
knows how much it’s worth! More than anyone ever dreamed! We found our
treasure.” He peers out at World’s End.
“The hell with buying
back the family holdings.
We’ll buy whole planets!”

SB laughs.
“We’ll sell it to the highest bidder. We’ll rent it. We’ll have the Prime
Minister on his knees, begging us for our secret—”

“We’ll buy
the water of life! We’ll live forever!”

I push
myself up. I reach out and take the globe from HK’s hands. It whispers faintly,
comfortingly. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I ask.

They look
at me blankly.

“This is my
discovery.”

“BZ—”

“You
can’t—!”

Their
voices clamor in the tight space of the cabin, rattling off the walls.

“—selfish—”

“—all we’ve
suffered—”

“—share it
with
us
?”

“We deserve
it!”

“Shut up.”
I glare at them. “The
stardrive
belongs to the people
of the Hegemony. It’s their heritage, their right. And I’m giving it back to
them. No one is going to hold it for ransom.”

“You’re
going to
give
it away?” SB says
scornfully. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never
been more serious in my life—” I blink and frown as life echoes
memory ....
Just the
way I saw it.
The last shadows of doubt about my sanity begin to fade. I
move back to Song, and hold the globe in front of her eyes. “Listen,” I beg
her. She seems to focus on it, but she doesn’t move.

SB watches
us. “She got what she deserved, at least.”

“But BZ
...” HK’s voice paws at me. “What about the family estates? Don’t you want them
back? Don’t you want—
”

SB snarls
at him, and he stops talking. SB looks up at me. “You’ll change your mind.”

I shake my
head.

We make the
rest of the journey in complete silence. The silence in my mind is far worse.
The thoughts that should have come to fill the emptiness refuse to form. I
remember
Ang
and
Spadrin
,
see my brothers in
their place; but I have no strength left for guilt, or pain, or even irony. My
exhaustion is so
utter
that I can’t even sleep. I
watch the wastelands replaying and receding: the deserts, the mountains, the
jungles ... the greed, the suffering, the lost dreams. Only the prospect of
seeing the Company town again makes me feel anything—an eagerness I never
dreamed I’d ever feel, because this time it marks the gateway out of hell.

It is the
middle of the night when we land at the Company’s field. The agents search us
with grueling thoroughness; but they can’t prove we aren’t what we claim, and
even they have some respect for sibyls. HK and SB watch me tensely, but I am
not about to give my secret to the Company. The globe is tossed aside as a
useless curiosity; I pick it up again as soon as the agents leave the rover.
They impound our vehicle, knowing we don’t dare complain. We’ll never see it
again. But it doesn’t matter. We are free, and safe.

I lead Song
as we leave security; she follows me docilely, her eyes on the globe. I look
for her mother beyond the gates, somehow expecting that she will know to meet
us there; but she doesn’t. I want to ask where she lives, but SB and HK insist
that we book passage back to
Foursgate
before I begin
my search. I give in, because I want to believe we are really getting out of
here as much as they do.