World's End

Page 124

And when I open my eyes again they stand before me, ragged, hazed in blue. I can see the sky through their backs. "HK? SB? Where--where are you?" I ask, barely

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believing what I see. "Are you alive? Tell me where--"

"You can't be serious," SB sneers. "You're going iogive it away?"

He is not answering what I say, but the voice of some angry ghost inside my head. Shut up! I think furiously, trying to shout down my madness--realizing suddenly that the ghost voice I hear is my own.

But when I focus my eyes again I am alone, listening to the memory of a conversation with my brothers

. . . not the one I just had, but another one, that I know has never happened.

I get up from the bed, cursing in frustration, with the watch clutched in my hand. The room is an obstacle course of things Song has extorted from her worshipers.

I kick my way through silver dishes and dismantled terminals; walking in circles, forcing myself to pass the window again and again without looking out. And every time I do, the compulsion, the yearning, the need, to look out at Fire Lake leaves me weak. Somehow I am the Lake's victim, as much as I am Song's. "You belong to the Lake now." Everything she told me after she infected me

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WORLD S END

must be true. I begin to believe the incredible evidence of my senses, even though I don't know how or why Fire

Lake has invaded my mind. I may be crazy, but the

Lake's power over me is real enough.

And if it is real, then somehow there has to be a way to break it. I go back to the bed and lie down again. I count, I calculate, I recite a dozen different alphabets out loud to keep my thoughts my own. The watch chimes, marking meaningless segments of time. Outside the window the sky darkens; the chamber fills with the glow of Song's fire globe. I begin to lose my voice, I begin to repeat myself. I try to picture Moon, the one person whose face I can still bear to see. I talk to her memory about the memories we share, trying to speak coherently

. . . until gradually her memory becomes so real to me that I do see her, reaching out to me, in a halo of blue light. I sit up, calling her name--

I wrench myself back miserably to the multiplication