World's End

Page 119

Song is sitting in her carven throne, crooning softly.

The sound sobs in the air like a lost child. Her eyes are vacant, but as she looks up at me they fill with black betrayal. I see figures moving about her in the darkening room, and at first I think they are her servants. But then

I realize that they are only ghosts. She is alone, completely alone . . . except for me. "Where were you?" she

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JOAN D. VINGE

cries. I avert my eyes. I go on into the next room and collapse on her bed, huddle shivering under my blanket.

The coolness of the tower amazes me after the heat outside. But Song is a sorceress; she bewitched me, she is a magician. . . .

There is a portable cooling unit under the table. I open my eyes and stare at it. Slowly I begin to realize where I am, and that I am alive, still alive. I could have died today . .. but death was the easy choice.

With a kind of amazement I realize that I still want to live. / want to live. I think of Moon again, and suddenly life catches fire inside me. Its heat gathers in my loins and surges into my brain. I lift my head. Two shadowy figures are making love on the bed beside me.

Their passion pours into my mind.

I roll off the bed with a groan. On my knees on the floor I watch myself with Song in a haze of red--our lust made visible. My body throbs with pleasure as my own

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ghost fills my head with inarticulate cries. I stumble back into the next room, and Song looks up at me now with hunger in her eyes, as if she shares my hallucination. How can we share each other's madness? But I am only listening to my blood. I drag Song from the chair onto the floor, pulling her reality into my fantasy as I surrender to my lust for her.

But she's not Moon--! my eyes shout at me. I break away from Song's lips, panting, shaking my head. Not Moon. Not the woman whose every touch was as warm and sweet as spring, whose gentle understanding made the joining of our bodies into something as beautiful as life itself--a celebration, a consecration ... an act of love. Not Moon. Not Moon. Not.

The fire inside me turns to ashes. Loss and bitter disappointment crystallize my thoughts. I look down into the face of a stranger, seeing her clearly at last, seeing that the real need inside me is not yesterday's mindless

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