World’s End (2 page)

The first
thing I did in the town was buy a sun helmet and a drink of cold water—they
don’t give away anything here, not even water. This is the Company’s town, as
the shopkeeper informed me, not a resort. The conglomerate that controls
World’s End is known as Universal Processing Consolidated, back in
Foursgate
. But out here they are simply the Company, the
only, and they’ve grown bloated and corrupt on their monopolistic exploitation.
Their presence is everywhere as you walk the streets—on signs, on people’s
lips, on their dreary uniform coveralls. No one looks at anyone else for longer
than they have to here; but I still felt as though hidden eyes followed me
constantly.

This town
seems to have no name. It certainly has no individual identity. It exists to
serve the Company, as a supply center and as a bottleneck for the countless
fortune hunters drawn to World’s End year after year—all of them certain
they’ll be the ones to strike it rich. The Company tolerates a limited number
of independent prospectors who want to explore the wilderness, who are willing
to run risks that even the Company won’t in searching out resources. It takes
no responsibility for their fates, but it takes half of their profits, if any.
They get their permits here; I suppose I’ll have to enquire about that.

World’s End
is an obsession for too many of them, the fools. I suppose it’s worthy, even
fitting, that it should be. World’s End is a canker at the heart of Number
Four’s largest continent, millions of kilometers of terrain that are still
virtually unknown after centuries of Hegemonic control. There’s been good
reason to explore it, and to believe in the tales of fortunes for the taking;
the Company is proof enough of that. The profits they’ve taken out of the
wastes have made Universal Processing more powerful on Number Four than
anything but the Planetary Council. Rich ores lie hidden out there, veins of
precious minerals, fist-sized gemstones—unimaginable wealth.

But while
the wasteland flaunts its treasures, it defies human efforts to fully exploit
them. Even the Company is powerless in the end, in World’s End. At the center
of the wasteland is
Fire
Lake
, a vast sea of
molten rock seeping up out of the planet’s core like blood from a wound.
Official reports would have one believe that it’s no more than a weak spot in
the planetary crust. But
they don’t—can’t—explain the bizarre
electromagnetic phenomena that spread out from
Fire
Lake
:
distortions that corrupt instrumental readings and turn their carefully
collected data into gibberish. There are half a hundred unofficial explanations
as well, wh
ich claim that
Fire
Lake
hides everything
from a black hole the size of an atom to the gateway to hell.

None of the
explanations satisfies me any better than having no explanation at all does.
Ever since I’ve been on Number Four I’ve thought that if they’d bring in the
best equipment—and
Kharemoughi
Technicians to operate
it decently—they’d get the truth. The Company has poured fortunes into a
solution and come away with nothing. Even the sibyls couldn’t give them an
answer—and sibyls are supposed to be able to answer any question. Probably they
just haven’t asked the right ones.

If a decent
answer existed, there wouldn’t be any mystery to confound the Company or lure
an endless stream of self-deluded wretches into itself and swallow them whole.
Hundreds of people disappear out here every year, and are never heard from
again ....

If a decent
answer existed, I wouldn’t be here, waiting to follow them. I don’t belong in
this sweltering hole, with a lot of bloody fools and fanatics, all searching
for an escape from responsibility or from the past; for a handout from fate,
for answers without questions. I’m not like them. I have no
choice,
duty and family honor demand it. My brothers are the self-deluded fools.
They’ve been missing out there for the better part of a year now.
Difficult to believe, when it seems like only yesterday that I
looked up and saw them standing before me, as unexpected as ghosts.
I
can still hear their voices, every word of the incredulity that passed between
them as they saw the scars on my wrists.
“
Gedda
.
Gedda
...
” they whispered, repeating the hateful name that I so justly deserved.

I turned my
back on them, staring out at the city through the windows of my office, waiting
until their voices died of shame.

They
wouldn’t ask me the reason for the scars, v\
fhy
I
still bore them, why I still lived. Nothing in the code of our class tells them
how to ask. So I faced them again, finally, and asked them what they were doing
here on Number Four, years away from the family estates and holdings back on
Kharemough
. “And what do you want from me?”

“Do we have
to want something besides to see you, after so long?” HK asked inanely.

“Yes,” I
said.

And so SB
said, “We’ve come to make our fortune. We were only passing through here,
anyway. We’re on our way to World’s End.” Anticipating my disapproval, he tried
to stare me down, still the impulsive bully.

I’ve faced
down a lot of stares like that in the years since I left home. “Don’t try to
feed me sand, SB,” I told him. “Some of us do grow up.”

His pale freckles
reddened. “I’d forgotten what a self righteous little bore you always were.”

I hadn’t
forgotten anything. I kept the desk terminal like a barrier between us. “You
know, they have a name for what you plan to do, around here. They call it the
Big Mistake.” I turned to HK, still surprised to see graying hair above that
familiar, self-indulgent face. The florid, shining-surfaced robe he wore hardly
flattered his obvious bulk. I wondered why he didn’t wear the traditional
uniform that was his proper dress as head of family. “I’d expect him to make a
mistake that big. But I never thought I’d meet you halfway across the galaxy
from our ancestors, or the ... your estates.” I cleared my throat. “Things must
be better than I remember
,
if you can leave your business
holdings headless for so long. Or do you have a spouse by now, and an heir?”
The
sublight
trips to and from the Black Gates added
up to several years passed at home before they could return. I try not to keep
track of the relativistic time lags that separate me from my past—it becomes an
exercise in masochism too easily—but I knew that nearly two decades had passed
on
Kharemough
since I’d last prayed at our family
shrine. Since the last time I saw my father
alive ....
Memory stabbed me with sudden treachery, showing me a face—a woman’s
face,
her skin and hair as pale as moonlight, the trefoil
tattoo of a sibyl on her throat. The face I always saw when I tried to see my
father’s face, ever since
Tiamat
. I looked up at my
brothers, my own face hot.

But HK was
staring at the backs of his hands as though they belonged to a stranger. “No
heir ... and no estates.”

“What?” I
whispered. But one look at their faces and I knew. I leaned on the desk,
straining forward. “No.”

“... lost
them ... bad investments ... didn’t foresee ... SB’s associates ...”

I could
barely focus on HK’s words. The diarrhea of his excuses told me nothing, and
everything. Images of
Kharemough
filled my mind: my
world, the only world, the only life worth living. The life I’ve given up
forever, because of my scars. I’d been able to live with its loss only because
I could believe that whatever shame I’d brought on myself, my family’s
reputation remained untouched, the memory of my ancestors immaculate, as long
as I stayed away. Their continuity and their ashes lay securely in the land
that had been my family’s since Empire times—proof of our intellect and our
honor. But now, after so many centuries, our estates belonged to someone else
... and so did our heritage. Some social climbing
lowborns
with money for honor burned incense to my ancestors; claimed my family, with
all its accomplishments, for their own. A thousand years of tradition destroyed
in a moment.
And all because of me.

“... barely
had the funds to finance this trip ... World’s End ... only hope of ever
recovering the family holdings ... help us regain the estate, and the honor
...”

A silvery
chiming broke across HK’s words, silencing him. He reached into the pocket on
his sleeve distractedly and pulled out the watch. The heirloom watch, the Old
Empire relic that my mother had restored and given to my father for a wedding
gift. It must have been an anachronistic curiosity even when it was new—a
handheld timepiece, that did nothing but tell time. Even my mother hadn’t been
certain how old it really was. As a child I had played with it endlessly,
obsessed by all that it stood for. I could still see every alien creature
engraved on its golden surface, feel the subtle forms of limb and jeweled eye
under the loving touch of my fingers. The watch was the one remembrance that my
father had left specifically to me in his will. But HK had kept it for himself.

“Get out.”
I held my voice together somehow as I touched my terminal, opening the door
behind them. “Get out of here, before
I
...” Words failed
me. “Go to hell in your own way! I don’t want to know about it.”

HK drew
himself up like a beached
clabbah
, straining for
dignity. “I should have known better than to appeal to your honor.”
Failing at dignity, and at irony.

SB caught
HK’s arm and pulled him toward the open door, glancing back once, to spit at
me, “
Gedda
.”
And after that I didn’t hear from them again. I told myself good riddance.

But instead
of forgetting about them, I’ve followed them into World’s End. I can’t believe
I’ve done this ... the thought of just spending a night in this squalid town is
enough to make any reasonable person take the next shuttle back to
civilization. And it’s not as if they went off for a holiday week and forgot
the time. They disappeared, into an uncharted wilderness! They were totally
unprepared for what they did—neither one of them ever attempted anything more
dangerous before this than spending all day in the baths. If the wasteland
didn’t kill them, the human animals
who
inhabit it
probably did, and picked their bones for good measure. Am I really going out
there to let the same thing happen to me—?

When I was
a boy, my nurse told me stories of the Child Stealer, who stole highborn babies
and replaced them with
cretinous
Unclassifieds
.
For years I was sure that it must have happened to HK and
SB
....
They chose their fate, and if World’s End swallowed them without a
trace, they got what they deserved. They left no one and nothing behind, except
me ... left me with nothing but memories.

But since
they’re gone I’m head of family now ... a title as hollow as it is unexpected.
And they are still my brothers. That makes it my duty to search for them; my
responsibility
to all our ancestors—who will be my ancestors
forever, whatever strangers violate my family’s honor and claim my blood as
their own. But still, if it weren’t for Father, for what I owe to
him ...

If it
weren’t for me, none of this would have happened.

But even if
I’m a failure, I’m not a fool. I have training that HK and SB never
had,
I have the experience to help me search for them. This
isn’t
impossible ....

Besides, if
I left here now, what would I go back to?
My job?
I
can’t even do that competently anymore. They don’t want to see my face back in
Foursgate
until I can perform my duties again. Ever since
my brothers came to this world, I’ve felt as if I’ve lost all control of my
life.

I’ve got to
give myself enough time for this search—time to find out what it is I’ve lost,
and how to get it back ... to find out whether it even matters.

Gods, can
it be a week already since I came here? It seems like forever—and yet it seems
like only yesterday that I made my first trip to the Office of Permits.

I was
informed by the slovenly woman who rented me my vermin-infested room that I
would need clearances. Even to stay here in town longer than overnight I would
have to have a Company permit—and to enter World’s End, I’d need to get half a
dozen more. When I heard the news I was elated, because I realized that my brothers
would have had to do the same thing, and that there would at least be some
record of how and when they left here. I actually thought that this was going
to be easy.

In the
morning I went into the center of town. But the moment I crossed the threshold
of the Permit Office on the town square, I realized that my preconceptions
about anything being reasonable or easy here were fantasies. There was no door
on the office; the heat was worse inside than outside, though I wouldn’t have
believed that was possible. There were no chairs, no counters, nothing but a
clear wall dividing the single room in two.