World’s End (15 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
But I still
need you. I need you more than ever ... if I could only find you, touch you,
hold you, make you mine the way I should have, everything would be right again—
You gave me
back the future. And now I’m lost in it; like a wretched dog howling after the
moon.
day.
This one was
the worst yet. We lost most of our food today—thanks to
Spadrin
and his selfish, craven stupidity.
He got into
another argument with
Ang
a few days ago, about his
using the rover’s main power access for his
plugheading
.
Even
Ang
finally agreed that the rover’s electrical
system shouldn’t be used for anything unnecessary. He ordered
Spadrin
to stop.
So
Spadrin
found another power supply—the unit that kept the
perishable food in
stass
—and he burned it out. But he
didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t even know what he’d done, the cretin.
No one did,
until we ate breakfast—and spent the rest of the day doubled up with cramps and
nausea. Food poisoning; we were lucky it didn’t kill us. When I could think
again about anything besides the pain in my gut, I checked the food locker’s
field generator, and found the short. I told the others. Even
Ang
couldn’t ignore the look on
Spadrin’s
face as he realized what he’d done—not just to us, this time, but to himself.
“How long?”
Ang
asked.
“I don’t
know what you’re talking about,”
Spadrin
said. He
wiped his mouth, wiped perspiration off of his face.
“You used
that damn
joybox
again!
How long
ago?”
Ang
dragged
Spadrin
up from his bunk with a sudden violence that startled me.
“
Th
-three days,”
Spadrin
gasped.
“Just three days—”
Ang
shoved him down onto the bunk again. “Then it’s all ruined! You ruined our
food. Why the hell didn’t you say something three days ago?”
“I didn’t
know,”
Spadrin
said sullenly. “How the fuck would I
know?”
“You knew
you’d blown something, you stupid bastard. Why didn’t you tell
Gedda
?”
Spadrin
glared at me. “He’s supposed to take care of that shit himself. It’s his
fault.”
“I can’t
fix something if I don’t know it’s out!” I pressed my hands against my stomach
and sat down.
“He’s
right,”
Ang
said, meaning me, for once. “It’s your
goddamn fault,
Spadrin
. If we don’t have enough
supplies to get us to my strike—”
I looked up
at him, and in that moment I realized that he would kill
Spadrin
,
kill us both, if he thought we stood in the way of his obsession. “Listen,
Ang
,” I said, trying to sound calm, “we still have plenty
of freeze dried left. We have enough water. If we ration it out we shouldn’t
have a real problem. You said we were getting close—”
He met my
eyes, but he wasn’t seeing me. “You can’t count on it, out here. You can’t
count on anything ....” He picked up the plate of food that he’d dropped when
the sickness hit him. He balanced it on his palms like an offering.
“Well,
that’s life,” I said softly, wondering how I would ever reach
aloud.
Ang
stared at me, and sanity crept slowly back into his expression. “You’re right.”
He nodded; his mouth twisted into a grimace of irony. “We’ll get there. We’ll
do it on half
rations,
we’ll do it on nothing, on our
hands and knees, if we have to.” He looked at me again, and
io
at
Spadrin
hunched
miserably on the bunk. Deliberately he wiped the food off the plate onto the
floor in front of
Spadrin’s
feet, and then he twisted
the thin metal plate between his heavy hands, crushing it, still looking at us.
He turned and went forward into the cab, as if we were no longer there.
We’re still
alive; still searching, still following the dead river upstream. We’ve been in
these clown-striped badlands for days.
Today we
finally met another pilgrim, here in this twisting maze of canyons. He was
leading a huge
whillp
, one of those rubbery,
glistening things from Big Blue that secrete acid to suck nourishment out of
the rock, and never eat or drink. It was loaded down with sacks and containers,
and it oozed along the canyon at barely walking speed.
I couldn’t
imagine how long the man must have been out here, moving at the
whillp’s
pace. I decided it was too long, because when he
saw us he wasn’t afraid. He stood in the middle of the dry wash, waving his
arms, shouting and grinning through his pale beard as if we were the best thing
he’d ever seen.
Ang
stopped the rover and we got out. Even the sight of three sweating, filthy,
armed men didn’t wipe the smile off of his face.
Spadrin
stood on one side of me; his eyes were narrow and cold.
Ang
stood on the other; his face was grim with a kind of tension that I’d never
seen on it before. I felt my hands clutching my gun too hard—more because of
their expressions than the stranger’s.
“Halloo,
halloo,” the stranger shouted, coming toward us with outstretched, empty hands.
He started to speak in a foreign language—after a minute I recognized it as
Kesraal
. That meant he was from Big Blue, like the beast.
He stopped in front of us, just short of trying to embrace somebody. He looked
at our guns and his face fell, as if we’d insulted him instead of threatened
him. He jabbered earnestly, raising grizzled eyebrows.
“
What’s he want
?”
Ang
muttered,
rhetorically. He scratched himself.
“He asked
if he’s offended us somehow,” I said. “His name is
Harkonni
,
and he’s from Big Blue. He’s very glad to see us—we’re the first people he’s
seen in almost a year.”
Ang
looked at me, surprised.
I shrugged.
“I speak a few languages.” I felt something stir in me that I’d almost
forgotten the name of.
Spadrin
snorted, and gestured with his rifle. “Then tell him to get out of our track,
or we’ll be the last people he ever sees.”
I saw the
stranger start and frown at
Spadrin
. “I don’t think
he needs it translated. You understand what we say?” I asked
Harkonni
in
Kesraal
.
He nodded,
still with the hurt look on his face. “Yes, yes.” He answered in the language
we were all using, this time. “I understand you. Forgive me, I forgot. I have
not had the tongue of this world in my mouth for a long time.”
Spadrin
laughed out loud at the incongruous image, and even
Ang’s
mouth inched upward.
Harkonni
grinned, obviously missing the fact that they were laughing at him. His pale
eyes were too bright, the eyes of a man with a fever. They were startlingly
blue against his sunburned face. I shifted from foot to foot uneasily.
“Yes, yes,”
he went on. “It is wonderful to hold conversation with you today.
Wonderful to see you all.
Are you
prospectors like myself?” There was only one other thing we could be, but that
didn’t seem to worry him.
Ang
nodded. He lowered his gun.
Spadrin
didn’t.
“I would
like to share some food and talk with you,”
Harkonni
said, with a kind of pathetic eagerness.
“Food?
You have a lot of food?”
Spadrin
asked.
Ang
looked uncertain, but he nodded. “I guess we can spare an hour.”
“This is
wonderful!”
Harkonni
beamed. “I have so much to tell!
I haven’t seen anyone in a year! I’ll even tell you my secret. I made a
strike—”
“Wait!” I
said in
Kesraal
. “Don’t tell us that. It’s not worth
it—save your secrets until you reach civilization.”
Spadrin
glared at me. “What did you say to him?”
“He told me
not to trust you,”
Harkonni
said earnestly. “But it’s
all right, I trust you—”
Spadrin
swung his rifle butt at me before I could move, and knocked me down. “Keep your
mouth shut!”
“
Spadrin
!”
Ang
shouted.
“For the love of the
Aurant
, not here!”
He pulled me to my feet. “You self-righteous ass,” he muttered at me. “You beg
him for trouble.”
I folded my
arms across my aching ribs, and leaned against the rover’s front end until I
could breathe again.
Harkonni
was half frowning, now, like a man waking up in a strange bed.
“So you
made a strike?”
Ang
said.
“Lucky
man.
Whereabouts—up there?”
He pointed in the
direction we were heading; his hand jerked with tension.
Harkonni
nodded a little uncertainly, as if he couldn’t stop himself from answering even
if he wanted to. “Yes, yes, all over the ground, up there, all over—”
Ang
swore
and pushed past him, running toward the pack beast. “They’re mine, goddamn it!
I found them first—”
Harkonni
ran after him. “No! Leave them alone! It’s my treasure—” He clawed at
Ang’s
shoulder.
Spadrin
followed
them and struck
Harkonni
with his rifle butt,
knocking him down.
Ang
went through the bags until he
found the one he was looking for.
Harkonni
sat
protesting on the ground, with
Spadrin’s
stun rifle
pointing into his face.
Ang
jerked the bag open and plunged his hand into it, pulling out a handful of
lumps. He looked down at what he held, and the blind greed in his eyes turned
to incredulity. “Shit!” He flung the handful away, and dumped the bag’s
contents onto the ground. “It’s nothing but shit!”
At first I
thought he only meant that he hadn’t found what he wanted. But then I saw his
face. I pushed away from the rover and went to where he stood looking down.
Scattered on the ground around his feet were small brownish-gray lumps of dried
excrement.
I looked
from
Ang’s
face to
Harkonni’s
,
and
Spadrin’s
.
“Gods!”
Spadrin
muttered. His mouth twisted with disgust. The stun
rifle quivered in his hands. For a minute I thought he was going to fire it
into
Harkonni’s
terrified face. At that range the
charge would kill him.
Harkonni
began to cry.
Spadrin
stepped back and away from him, as if killing him
was beneath even
Spadrin’s
dignity. “Let’s get out of
here.”
Ang
nodded and dropped the bag he was still holding onto the pile of dung. He wiped
his hands on his shorts. His face was empty of everything but relief. “It’s
still up there.” He looked away, following the
whillp’s
shining acid-etched trail on up the canyon with his eyes.
“My
treasure.”
He started back to the rover.
Spadrin
grabbed up a sack of
Harkonni’s
food supplies and
followed him.
“My treasure,
my treasure ...”
Harkonni
sobbed. He crawled past me
toward the pile of dung.
“
Gedda
!”
Ang
called. “Come
on!”
I went back
to the rover, almost running to get away from the sound of
Harkonni’s
weeping.
I can feel
it, I can almost smell it!”
Ang
said this morning. He
got us moving when it was barely
dawn,
he was so sure
we’d find his treasure today. The fault broken terrain ahead of us was stained
a rust
red. He swore it would hold the
solii
formation. He set the rover’s tracer equipment to close-scan for the proper
mineral compounds. He was so
sure ....
The sky was
filled with black and purple clouds, the way it often was in the late
afternoons, turning the light washed badlands sullen and dark ahead. Lightning
flickered and a few fat drops of rain pockmarked the dust on the windshield,
making a promise the clouds never kept. Thunder rolled over and around us like
the laughter of the gods. And we came to the end of
Ang’s
journey.