World’s End (9 page)

It was the
longest speech I’d heard from
Ang
since I’d met him.
I couldn’t begin to justify the complexities of
Kharemoughi
social structure to someone like him; I didn’t even try. I merely said, “My
being wrong doesn’t make you right.” His mouth snapped shut. I went on, as
reasonably as I could, “If you find the Company so eminently fair, why
aren’t you
still working for them?”

The frown
setted
more deeply into his face.
He sat down again, tugging at his
religious medal. He said, “I

got
sick
of never getting rich ... of finding more ways for some faceless bloodsuckers
to get rich instead.” He stared at the walls of the
room,
spoke to them, as if his voice could somehow reach through them into the depths
of the installation. “My wife used to work here. She left, years ago, because
she couldn’t stand the Company anymore. She took my son. Said I was wasting my
life. She was just like the Company: never satisfied. She didn’t understand why
I wouldn’t leave. She didn’t understand about World’s End.” He shook his head,
as if he were shaking it free of ghosts. “No one understood why I go out there.
Because you have to go out there to know her better than any human being ....”
For a moment I thought he was still talking about his wife. “For years I saw
the independents, those
skywheelers
and losers,
trying to do my job ... and some of them doing it!
Getting
rich off of World’s End, instead of me.
But I always knew she’d show me
her heart someday. And then I—” He broke off, glancing around him. “We’ll all
be rich. I promise you that much.” He actually smiled. It only made his face
more expressionless.

“You have a
real plan?”
Spadrin
asked. “What is it?”

I touched
the pouch where I kept my brothers’ picture, feeling tension tighten in my
chest. If
Ang
had a definite plan in mind, that would
make it much harder to get him to cooperate with my search.

But
Ang
pointed at the walls, shaking his head. He said in a
whisper, “Not yet.”

Spadrin
frowned, but he nodded. I sighed, waiting to show
Ang
the picture, and tell him the truth as well. This was not the time. I wondered
when the right time would ever come.

“What about
the grid?”
Ang
asked me.

I shook my
head. “They haven’t got what we need.”

“You’re
sure? You’re really sure?”

I nodded
wearily.

He muttered
a curse, but his expression didn’t change, as if it didn’t really make any
difference to him. “We’ll leave at dawn, then.” He looked back at me.
“One piece of advice,
Gedda
.
Don’t
try to find reasons for the things you see in World’s End.
Because
there aren’t any.”

We’re
crossing a range of mountains now. The jungles are finally well below us,
thank
the gods, but nothing has gotten better except the
smell. At least
Ang
knows the passes; if he didn’t, I
wouldn’t be able to tell the trail from the wilderness. If we’d only gotten
that damned
grid ....
Oh, the hell with it. We crawl;
I might as well get used to it.

We left
most of the rain behind, along with the jungle.
Ang
says it just gets drier from here on. He ordered us to conserve water, even
with the recycler. Unfortunately he seems to consider cleanliness in close
quarters a luxury. I’m damned if I’ll grow a beard.

Spadrin
seems to have rights that
Ang
doesn’t even give to
himself. What the hell right does anyone have to take up storage space with
crates of liquor and a full spectrum video receiver when we barely have room to
move inside the rover as it is? On top of that, he’s a
plughead
.
He spends half his time buried in that obscene device, overtaxing the rover’s
power systems. He complains that he’s “bored” without his addictions.
Ang’s
the only one who can pilot in this terrain, leaving
Spadrin
with nothing much to do.
Ang
seems to feel it’s safer to let him have what he wants. Maybe he’s right;
Spadrin’s
safer in a stupor than he is alert and restless.

This
morning he walked in on me as I was using the toilet in the momentary privacy
of the rover’s sleeping area. He looked me up and down, smirking at my
annoyance, and said, “So you impersonated a Blue.
Ang
was right: I’ll bet you wore that uniform like you were born in it. You look
like you’re still wearing it—”

I pulled up
my shorts. “Maybe your conscience is bothering you,” I said. He laughed, but
neither of us was joking, and neither of us thought it was funny. He pushed me
off-balance as he went forward again.

I should
have brought a weapon I could keep by me; but it would have broken the law. The
law doesn’t bother
Spadrin
. We have weapons with the
supplies, but
Ang
keeps them locked up. The fool
really thinks that makes him
safe ....

What is it
about this place? It’s like
quicksand ....
Time
carries us forward, but the deeper we travel into World’s End, the deeper I
seem to sink into the past. By the time I reach
Fire
Lake
...

I only
wanted to get away from the campsite, and the others, for a walk this evening;
another evening spent in the company of
Ang
and
Spadrin
was beginning to seem like an eternity. Number
Four’s immense, solitary moon was as bright as a lantern in the nearly starless
sky, and the three of us could have been the only living beings on this entire
world. When I set out, wandering alone in the hills seemed safer and far more
pleasant than sitting at
Spadrin’s
side.

In the
moonlight the mountains looked like the weed choked ruins of some giant’s
mansion, built with stones the size of houses. Like something out of the Old
Empire—perhaps the
cityworld
of
Tell’haspah
,
haunted by the spirits of its unremembered ancestors. The sound of the wind
filled me with
a homesickness
for places I’ve never
seen. I even thought of sleeping out; the cool night wind and the open sky were
paradise, after the stinking closeness of the rover and
Ang’s
snoring.

Suddenly I
came upon a primitive animal trap, half hidden among the rocks and scrub in a
small open space. In its jaws was something shriveled and black. I didn’t know
what it was until I’d gotten close enough to touch it. It was a foot, the limb
of some creature that had been caught in the trap long ago. In its frenzy to
live and be free, some animal had gnawed off its own foot.

I crouched
there for a while, without the strength to move, before I unfastened the
leather wrist guards that hid my scars. I stared at the welts on my arms. And
then I opened my belt pouch and laid its contents out in the dust: the picture
of my brothers, the trefoil,
the
picture of Song. Her
hair was like the night sky, glittering blackness. Her wild dark eyes gazed
into mine like the soul of this place.
I
know you,
they whispered,
I know your
secret heart. I know why
you’be
come
.

I turned
away from her image, to the faces of my brothers, and looked away from
them ....

And I
remembered how I had looked away from the inspector’s gaze as she handed me the
message transcript that had followed me to
Tiamat
from
Kharemough
.

“Sergeant,”
she said, more hesitantly than I’d ever heard her speak, “I’m ... afraid it’s bad
news.”

I felt my
face go numb, and my mind. I took the transcript from her with nerveless
fingers, knowing before I even looked at it what it would say. “My father is
dead.” I spoke the words to the naked, ancient wall of the hallway.
And I killed him
. I put out a hand to
steady myself.

“I’m
sorry,” the inspector murmured to my turned back. And then, in her native
language, she said, “May he live forever in the space of a thousand hearts.”

I nodded
slightly, all I could do. Finally I looked at what she had given me. The
transcript was a brief, cursory message from my brother HK. It said he was now
head of family, and included a copy of my father’s will. I crumpled the
transcript in my fist as though I could crush it out of existence. It sprang
back into perfect form as I released it, and dropped to the floor. A crowd of
patrolmen and rowdy
offworlders
pushed past us,
trampling it underfoot.

“Sergeant
...” I felt the inspector’s hand fall lightly on my shoulder. I let it stay
there by an effort of will. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day—
”

“No,
Inspector.” I faced her again. “I’m all right. My father—my father’s been dead
for more than two years.” It had taken that long for the message to reach
Tiamat
, with the
sublight
time
gaps at either end of the
stargate
. It had been years
since the rituals had been spoken, years since he had joined his ancestors in
the peaceful gardens. And it would be many years more before I could even think
about returning to honor him there. “There’s ... nothing I can do about it
now.”

She frowned
slightly, and said, “You can take the time to let yourself feel something.” She
was a tough, ironic woman—
Newhavenese
, like most of
the force stationed there. I had been her aide for only a few months, since
shortly after I arrived. She was more intelligent than most of the
Newhavenese
seemed to be, but until now I’d never thought
of her as sensitive. I wished fiercely that she hadn’t chosen this moment to
demonstrate it.

“I don’t
want to,” I whispered.

“What?”

I drew
myself up. “I don’t want to—to inflict my personal problems on you, Inspector.
I can grieve on my own time, if that’s necessary.”

She glanced
upward, appealing to unseen gods. Her lips moved silently,
Kharemoughis
. “Then the rest of
the day is your own time,” she said. “That’s an order, Sergeant.”

I saluted,
helpless to do anything but obey.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I
started away from her. She leaned down and picked up the transcript. I stopped,
turned back, holding out my hand. She gave it to me. “Thank you,” I said,
trying not to blink.

She smiled
at me, a sad smile with a meaning I didn’t really understand. “Remember the
good things,” she said. “Those are what last.”

I nodded,
but the truth was burning my throat like acid. “My father ... loved me,” I
mumbled. “And I ...I...”I shook my head and walked away as quickly as I could.

My father loved me
. It filled my head as I went out into the
teeming streets of the ancient city of
Carbuncle
—the
jewel, the fester, that I had come so far to see. I walked the streets for
hours, but I saw none of its wonders or its corruption. I saw only the past. As
I walked I remembered the exact moment when I learned that my father loved me.
I was standing in the doorway to the sun room, drawn by the rare sound of his
voice raised in anger. My brothers’ voices answered him, whining and resentful
by turns. They were arguing about money—an argument that was far from rare.

I stood
just out of sight, feeling a familiar ache in my chest at the sound of their
quarrel ... perversely aching to be a part of it. Third son, youngest by years,
I had never been able to escape my birth order or my brothers’ shadow; never
able to matter enough to anyone to make them rage at me—

“I cannot
believe thou are any sons of mine!” my father shouted. “Why can’t thou behave
like thy brother, with honor and
wisdom!
The two of
thee do not make one half of him in human value.”

I went to
the doorway and stared into the green-dappled room. HK and SB looked up at me,
and my father turned. I read the truth in all of their eyes, in a moment that
seemed to go on and on.

A thousand
small things that my father had done, shown me, asked of me, suddenly filled my
mind—things I had ignored, always looking for something more. The walks down to
the family shrine, just the two of us, on the summer evenings ... his heirloom
watch that only I had ever been allowed to hold. I thought about my brothers’
endless petty torments ... had they all sprung from jealousy?

All my life
I’d felt inadequate, incomplete—only to learn, in such a way, that I was his
favorite son.

Only to
realize now, years too late again, that I had failed him after all. He had
wanted me to stay, and I had left
Kharemough
. He had
wanted me to ... to change things. And I hadn’t understood.