World’s End (5 page)

“What are
you doing out here?” he asked me.

“The same
thing you are,” I said.

He didn’t
believe it, any more than I did. He looked at Ang. “I don’t want him.”

“I do.”
Ang
turned away abruptly. “
Gedda
,”
he said to me, pointing at the rusty metal hulk rising up beside us, “take a
look at it,
tell
me what you need.”

I moved
warily past
Spadrin
, and began to inspect the
vehicle. I heard the two of them arguing behind me as if I couldn’t hear them;
listened while trying to seem like I wasn’t listening.
Spadrin
used the
worldspeech
of Number Four with surprising
fluency. Anyone can learn a language quickly with an enhancer, but only someone
with some intelligence will speak it well.
Spadrin
is
not stupid ... and I won’t forget it. At last he turned and strode away,
cursing, and I finished my inspection in peace.

“Well?”
Ang
said,
when I climbed down from
the cab.

“It’s not
hopeless.” I leaned against the rover’s pitted side and wiped rust from my
hands. “The power unit is sound. You said you can get me tools and parts?”

He nodded.

“It’s not
going to be cheap—”

“I have
contacts in the Company. I can get anything you want.” The last was said with
something closer to arrogance than to confidence.

“Good,
then. How much do you understand about how a rover functions?”

“A hell of
a lot more than most people,” he snapped. “I’ve been piloting them since you
were a snot-nosed brat.” As if somehow I
were
supposed
to have known that. “Just tell me what you want.”

I bobbed my
head. “Then I’ll be precise.” I gave him my initial lists, being as technically
accurate as possible, and watching him for signs of comprehension. “... And
finally, but most importantly, I’m going to need a new
repeller
grid, if you want this thing airborne.”

That got a
reaction.
“A grid?
The grid is out?”

I nodded.
“It’s completely deteriorated. Believe
me,
you don’t
want to risk flight on it.”

“By the
Aurant
!”
His frustration was scorching. A
grid would make the difference between swift, comfortable travel by air, and an
endless, arduous land journey.
All the difference in the
world.
But he only grunted. “I’ll see what I can do.” He reached into a
pocket of his coveralls, pulled out a
fesh
stick, and
stuck the piece of narcotic soaked root into his mouth.

“
Ang
—”

He looked
up sharply, as if he knew what I was about to say.

“Why didn’t
you tell me about
Spadrin
?”

He looked
down again, lighting the
fesh
, and shrugged.

“Listen,
Ang
....” I took a deep breath, trying to hold on to my
patience. “This is a two-man vehicle. Three of us
is
going to make spending a lot of time in it damned uncomfortable. I know why you
need me on this trip; but why him?”

“Protection.”

“Protection!”
It was the last thing I’d expected to hear him say. I almost told him
that I was police-trained, that I could offer him better and surer protection
than
Spadrin
ever could—but I didn’t want to start
him asking about my motives instead of
Spadrin’s
.
“Gods, man,” I shook my head, “don’t you know what
Spadrin
is?” I was sure
Ang
had never even been to
Foursgate
, let alone off world. But spending his life here
in this borderland, he must have seen hundreds of
Spadrins
passing through: on the run from the law, or looking for easy victims.

“He’s an
offworlder
.”
Ang
said it as if
offworlder
and
scum were the same word. “He came to World’s End just like you. Said he was
stranded in
Foursgate
, needs a stake to get back to
his
homeworld
.”

“He’s more
than that.” I couldn’t keep my own voice from rising. “Do you know what those
tattoos of his mean? He’s killed more people than you have fingers to count
them. He’s wanted for crimes on most of the worlds of the Hegemony. If he’s
stranded here, it’s probably because he’s in trouble with his own kind, and he
needs a place to cool out as much as he needs a
stake ....
He’s going into World’s End hunting fresh meat, and you’ll be the first—”

“How do you
know so damn much about it?”
Ang
said sullenly.

I
hesitated, realizing that I’d said too much already. But he went on, before I
had to answer. “He’s no worse than the robbers and ‘jacks we’ll meet out
there—and he’ll be on our side.”

“On our side?”
I echoed incredulously. “He’s on nobody’s side but his own. He’s a
criminal,
Ang
! You’re not protecting
yourself,
you’re putting a target on your back.”

“I’m not
stupid.” His jaw clenched stubbornly. “I know what I’m doing. He won’t make
trouble.”

“You’re
deluding yourself. We have a saying on the ... there’s a saying, that a man who
lies down with thieves is lucky if he ever wakes up again.”

“You don’t
have to go with us.” He pointed a thumb back toward town. “You can stay here.”

My mouth
tightened. “I’ll go,” I said, thinking,
But
I’ll sleep with my
eyes open.

“You’ll
go.” His own mouth curved upward. “Just like all the rest.”

For the
past week I’ve been trying to resurrect
Ang’s
dead
rover piece by piece, with whatever parts he can beg, borrow, or steal. He is
an ex-Company man, as I’d thought; he must be calling in a lot of favors. He’s gone
most of every day, hustling up more parts—or maybe just avoiding us, I don’t
know. I don’t think he cares much for either
Spadrin
or me; probably wishes he didn’t need us. It’s mutual. But sooner or later
everything I ask for shows up at the junkyard, where the rover lies like some
immense dead beetle. Every time I trip over supplies inside the sleeping cabin,
I try to imagine what it will be like to share this vehicle with two other
people, even for a few days. Someone is going to sleep on the floor; it isn’t
going to be me.

Working on
the rover is almost a pleasure, after sitting in
C’uarr’s
place for so long. Though if someone had told me ten years ago that I’d ever
enjoy lying on my back in the mud, with lube sifting into my eyes, sweating and
blistered like some common laborer, I’d have committed suicide.
I ... All in the line of duty, as they say.
There are worse
things than manual labor, and I’ve borne some of them, all in the line of duty.

Not that
today was unique for its hard work. More for its tedium, while I waited for the
replacement grid I need to get the rover airborne. I spent the morning
rereading the last of the information tapes I’d managed to unearth in the
pathetic local datacenter. I’ve had to learn about this vehicle the hard way; they’ve
barely heard of reading out here, let alone memory augmentation. I finally
finished everything, and settled into
adhani
meditation in the rover’s shadow. Then
Spadrin
arrived. He kicked me in the thigh, and said, “Wake up, you lazy shit.”

I lunged to
my feet, my reflexes almost betraying my training as my hand reached for the
weapon I no longer carry.

Spadrin
stepped back, and I froze as I saw metal. The knife blade disappeared into the
sheath hidden in his sleeve. He grinned faintly, as if he’d proved something.

Seeing him
always makes me think of venomous insects exposed beneath overturned stones.
This time he was wearing the loose-woven tunic and pants
Ang
had forced him to buy for practicality. He had a half-empty bottle of
ouvung
in his fist, as usual. He prodded the tape-reader
I’d been studying and said, slurring, “You goddamn
Kharemoughis
make me sick. You think the universe’s got nothing better to do than wait
around till you feel like fixing it.”

I reordered
my tangled instrument belt. My hands ached from the need to make fists. He was
drunk—I could have had him disarmed and flat on his back in seconds, but I
can’t afford to betray my police training. It would only make him more
suspicious of me—and make it ever harder to get the cooperation I need from
Ang. I only said, “I told
Ang
I’ll finish the work
when he gets me the
repeller
grid. I never claimed to
be a miracle worker.”

“Then
you’re the first Tech I ever met who didn’t.” He began to turn away.

“
Spadrin
,” I said, and watched him turn back. “Don’t ever
touch me again.”

He grinned,
and spat the
iesta
pod he’d been chewing on at my
boot.

I began to
tremble as I watched him go. The emotion was so strong I could taste it, like
vomit. I wanted to ... Gods, what’s wrong with me—letting a degenerate like
that drag me down to his level?
Ang
must be blind.

Something
happened today, and I don’t know what I to make of it ... except that I want to
make it mean something.

This
morning I heard
Spadrin’s
voice at the edge of the
scrapyard
. I looked out of the rover’s cab, afraid that he
was coming to harass me again. But he was talking with someone else—I saw two
figures swim in the heated air. The other person was a woman. I watched him
push her away suddenly, so hard that she fell. He disappeared into the
yellow-green jungle.

I crossed
the field of rusting metal and fleshy weeds to help the woman up. As I saw her
face I realized I’d seen her before Last night she came to the door of
Ang’s
place in the Quarter, while we were going over supply
lists.
Ang
had sent her away angrily, and without
bothering to explain anything to us.

“I’m all
right ... thank you,” she said, obviously shaken. She wasn’t what I expected at
all—a small, neat woman in the usual loose white Company coveralls. Her face
was bare, and her dark, graying hair was cut short. She was not young, though
she was probably younger than she looked. There was an atypical air of
gentility and dignity about her. I knew what she wasn’t, but I couldn’t guess
what she was. She met my stare with her own, and said, “You’re very kind.” The
words were like a judgment, or a benediction. “My name is Hahn—
Tiras
ranKells
Hahn,” last name
first, after the local custom.

“May I
speak with you?” She sounded as if she didn’t expect me to say yes.

But I said,
“Call me
Gedda
,” and I offered her my arm. She seemed
grateful for the support as I led her back to the rover’s shade. She sipped
cold water from my canteen, buying time until she was ready to tell me what she
wanted. I listened to the sounds of the day—the thrumming of a million
heat-besotted
tarkas
, the jungle’s sentient whisper,
the clanking and grinding of the Company’s refinery hidden behind high gray
walls to our left. I uprooted a fat creeper that had
spiralled
up the rover’s side since yesterday—I’ve never known a place where flora grows
with such preternatural speed. I threw it away and wiped my hands on my
hopelessly stained pants. If I live to see the Millennium, I may never be clean
of the feel of this place.

“It’s
frightening, isn’t it?” she said.

“What?” I
asked.

“How
precariously we float on the surface of life.”

I grunted,
looking at the jungle. “A functional
repeller
grid
would solve that problem. What did you want of
Ang
?”

“His help.
Someone’s help ....” She rubbed her face. “My daughter Song ... is missing.
My only child.”

“Have you
reported—
”

“You don’t
understand!” She shook her head. “She’s gone to
Fire
Lake
.”

I laughed.
Then I said, “Forgive me,” at the sight of her face. “You couldn’t know. You
just struck a nerve: I’ve come here to find my brothers. It’s been almost a
year since they went into World’s End. I don’t know what happened to them. I
don’t even know if they’re dead or alive. But they’re all the family I have
left. I have to find them; if I have to go into hell itself and drag them
back—” I broke off, filled with sudden anger.

“Yes,” she
murmured. “Yes. You understand.” Her callused hands clutched at her sleeves.
“The need for proof.”