World's End

by Joan D. Vinge

  “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.

  DAY 7.

  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.

  Beyond the wall I saw three people standing or sitting in the real office, which looked primitive but functional. I crossed the room to the wall and rapped on it. Only one of the clerks even bothered to glance up at me; none of them came to the wall. I rapped on the wall again, harder, as I realized they were ignoring me. She waved a dismissing hand, as if she were involved in something important. She was not doing anything at all that I could see.

  Another obvious outsider came into the office and stood at the wall beside me, holding up a credit disc. He shouted something that sounded like “Moron!” One of the clerks, an old man with a face like a slice of dried fruit, crossed the room to us at last. He struck something against the wall and I heard a single note chime; abruptly there was a window open in front of the other man. A breath of cool, dry air touched my face.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I was here first.”

  “Wait your turn,” the clerk snapped at me. The other man grinned, holding his spot, as the clerk took his credit.

  I waited, trying to control my anger at being treated like the lowest Unclassified back on Kharemough. The other man finished his business at last, and I leaped to take his place before the clerk could close the window again.

  “I need . . . I need some information,” I blurted. “I’m looking for my brothers—”

  The clerk cocked his head insolently. “They’re not in here, sonny. Go back where you come from, you’ll find all the brothers you want.” He wheezed with silent laughter.

  I took a deep breath, and said, as evenly as I could, “My brothers . . . were here about a year ago. I believe they went into World’s End. They didn’t come back. I’m here to search for them. I understand that I need some kind of permits to do that. I’d like to apply for them.”

  He turned away from the window without a word; but it stayed open and so I waited. He came back with a fistful of printout sheets. “Fill out these.” He shoved them through at me and closed the window.

  “You mean write on this? By hand?” I said. But I was already talking to his back. I looked around the empty office, searching futilely for a seat or a table. The room had not miraculously produced any, and so I leaned against the wall, filling out forms in quadruplicate for an hour with a broken stylus I found on the floor in a corner. By the time I was through detailing my business, requesting permissions, swearing solvency and sanity and revealing details of my physical and mental condition that were not even a physician’s business, I had begun to think that the Company was a more formidable foe than any I’d ever meet in World’s End. I wiped the sweat from my eyes for the hundredth time. There were still blank spaces left unfilled on half a dozen sheets, affidavits unattached, data unconfirmed. I went back to the wall. “Moron!” I shouted.

  The clerk answered me almost promptly this time. He took my papers and frowned and shook his head. “These aren’t completed.”

  “I know that,” I said, barely civil. “It’s impossible. I couldn’t get everything you want there if I spent a month back in Foursgate. . . . I’d have to send to Kharemough! I can’t wait years—”

  He shrugged, picking at his hangnails; the forms rustled. I could smell him, a faint musty smell riding the cool air. “Should have come better prepared.” He looked up at me as if he expected to see something that wasn’t on my face. When he didn’t find it, he shuffled the papers again. “Well . . . might be a way around some of these things here . . . might be some things we could do for you . . . might be some things we could overlook. . . . ” He looked up at me once more, expectantly.

  I didn’t answer, not understanding what he wanted.

  Finally he said, “It’ll cost you.”

  I stiffened. “You mean a bribe? You expect me to pay you off, is that what you mean? I want to speak to your superior, Moron.”

  “Morang,” he said coldly. “I’m in charge here. And I don’t like your attitude. The Company doesn’t have to do anything for you, you understand? Nobody needs you here; your kind is as cheap as dirt. We let you explore Company territory out of our generosity, and if you’re not willing to give and take a little, you can just take the next shuttle out of here.”

  The irony struck me so hard I almost laughed. Fortunately I did not. “How much are your . . . fees?” I asked sourly.

  “Te
n for the first week’s residency permit here in town.”

  “Ten?”

  “Fifteen, for every week after.” He looked at me. This time I kept my mouth shut.

  “The clearances and permissions for you to actually enter World’s End to prospect—or for whatever purposes you claim here—are more complicated. They take time, they’ve got to pass through a lot of hands. . . . Some of the security people might want to interview you in person—” He raised his eyebrows significantly; I bit my tongue. “Just to get you started, with all the data you’re missing, is going to cost you fifty.” He put out his hand.

  My own hand tightened around my credit disc. “In that case, before I pay you anything, I at least want proof that my brothers actually went into World’s End. I expect you can look that up in your datafiles.”

  “It’s not permitted—”

  “For a fee.” I held my credit out in front of him.

  “I suppose I can make an exception. Names?” I gave him their names and my credit, and he went away again. After another interminable wait he came back. He shoved a printout through at me, as if he knew I would only accept hard copy.

  The data told me that my brothers had gotten their permits from the Company, and their clearances, and their supplies. How much it had cost them was not listed. They had gone into World’s End about a month after I saw them. That was all. “Is this really all of it? Can’t you tell me how they were traveling, or which direction they went, at least?”

  He shook his head. “You got what you asked for.” He handed me back my credit disc.

  I glanced at my balance, and grimaced. “I guess I did.” He frowned; my sarcasm was not lost on him, at least. “When can I expect to get my clearances?”

  “Come back in a couple of days. Maybe something will be ready by then. There’ll be more fees due.” He took a long look at me. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t count on leaving here soon.” He shut the window with another crystalline note, and walked away.

  And every time I go there Morang tells me, “Come back in a couple of days.” There are always more fees, but nothing to show for them. And every time I go in he laughs up his sleeve at me again. I’m a marked man. I know I’m not playing this game right . . . but damn it, I wasn’t born to sycophantry and bribery, the way everyone in this town seems to have been!

  If only there were some other way into World’s End—but the Company monitors its perimeters with heavier surveillance than most lawful governments do. This is the only rational way.

  My brothers came this way, and they escaped this bureaucratic maze, at least. There has to be a way for me to find their trail from here, and follow it. Patience, that’s all I need. Perseverance. Logic.

  Damn it! Bug spray.

  DAY 14.

  Today began like yesterday, and the day before. I made the ritual bureaucratic homages one more time, trying to get my clearances—getting nothing but heat stroke and a thirst. After that I started back to C’uarr’s place in the Quarter; another ritual programmed into my feet by now. I swore I wouldn’t go to C’uarr’s today . . . swore I’d be sick to my stomach if I even saw another glass of his rotgut liquor. But I went there anyway.

  The sudden darkness of the bar is as blinding as the street. I always stop inside the doorway, pushing back the sunshield of my helmet, blinking until my eyes can fill in the tableau of the barroom regulars. The handful of outsiders in their foreign clothes stand out among the Company workers like bits of colored glass in a bed of smooth white stones. Always the same strangers—trapped like me in this purgatory I’ve begun to think of as the Wait.

  “Still here, pilgrim?” a hulking Company guard asked me as he crowded me aside from the entrance. He stopped, grinning down at the indignation I couldn’t quite disguise. A lifetime won’t be enough time to make me suffer gracefully the insults of inferiors. “How long’s it been for you?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Well, maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not.” He laughed, showing yellow teeth.

  I stood out of reach of his meathook hands. A few days back I saw two guards casually break all the fingers of a prospector they claimed was cheating at five-and twenty. The Company is its own law when you reach World’s End, and the law changes on a whim or with a mood. The uniform law of the Hegemony is only a memory here.

  The guard moved on, and I went to the bar. I ordered a drink too loudly, and had to endure C’uarr’s smirking, slow-motion response. C’uarr, the one-eyed, is as bitter and corrosive as his poisonous liquor. He’s not a local—from Samathe, probably, by the name. I used to wonder what kept him here, when he plainly hates this town and what he’s doing, just like he hates everyone who comes into this place. As the days passed and stagnation began to eat at me I started to think he was a parasite who lived on the misery of the Wait more than on any money it brought him. Today it occurred to me that he stays simply out of inertia.

  C’uarr slammed the squat glass down on the filthy bar; droplets of red liquor bloodied his hand. His hand reached out, palm up as always. I flipped him a marker. “Any word?” I asked as I took my drink. I’d paid him to ask around about my brothers. But the question was rhetorical by now; I turned away even before I heard the answer. It was always no. I felt C’uarr’s stare follow me, full of mockery and dark speculation. He’s like an animal—he senses that I’m not really the same as the others. I can tell when he looks at me.

  The low-ceilinged room stinks of mildew and fesh sticks. No one else bothers to glance up as I make my way to a bench at an empty corner table. I’ve faded into the background, just like they have. Pilgrims, the Company workers call them, and laugh. They make their pilgrimage to this place from all over the planet, from all over the Hegemony—seekers after legendary wealth, hidden treasure—all believers in the same religion, greed. Most of them end up in this trap instead, caught like bugs in a bottle while C’uarr and the Company bleed them dry.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting, staring, nursing that one drink until C’uarr threatened to throw me out. I ordered another, but didn’t let myself drink it. The cheap, ruby-red local liquor is fermented from some kind of fungus. It’s called ouvung. A dead worm drifts in every bottle. The first time I took a sip of it I gagged—and wondered whether the worm wasn’t really there as a testament to the stupidity of its drinkers. I got used to it, just as they all do.

  Finally the sky beyond the doorway began to darken. I ate another cheap, repulsive meal, and went back to my bug-infested room to sleep for the night. I’ve spent more on bug spray and sonic screens since I got here than I have on food. But I have to get some sleep . . . so that I can get up and perform this futile round over again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. . . .

  Sometimes I think I must be crazy to stay here . . . whenever I consider the odds against finding my brothers’ trail in all that nothingness, in all of World’s End. No one I’ve questioned here even remembers seeing them. Why in the name of a hundred ancestors couldn’t HK have married decently, and had half a dozen heirs? Maybe one of them would have been halfway intelligent. . . . SB talked him out of it, I’ll warrant; the way he talked him out of every other sensible thought he ever had. Though what woman would have either one of them? Even our own mother. . . .

  You idiot—if you ever do get clearance from the Company to enter World’s End, what the hell will you do with it?

  DAY 21.

  Three weeks.

  Three weeks in this outhouse, and more money wasted already than I earn in half a year. Gods, even Tiamat was better than this. So today I celebrated . . . with a whole bottle of C’uarr’s rotgut to keep me company. He must’ve talked me into it. He cheated me, though. I paid for a full bottle, but he gave me this empty, without even a worm. . . .

  Damn it, I know I only had a couple. . . . I’m not a drunkard. I never touch liquor. Drunkenness disgusts me. It’s a sign of weak character. I hate drunks. I ought to. The gods know I have to deal with enough of them . . . used to. Not anymore.
r />   Not since a month ago. . . . It should have happened years ago. The message from the Chief Inspector on my screen. When I saw it I wanted to run away, like a child, because I knew there was only one reason he’d ask me to report to him in person. But my body got up from behind my desk and took me to him; it made the correct salute, as if my face wasn’t betraying it with a look more guilty than a felon’s.

  Chief Inspector Savanne is not an easy man to face, even on a viewscreen. He returned my salute, studying me with an uncertainty that was harder to endure than the cold disapproval I’d been expecting.

  “Sir—” I began, and bit off the flood of excuses that filled my mouth. I looked down along the blue length of my uniform at my boots. I saw a hypocrite and a traitor wearing the clothes of an honest man. I’m sure the Chief Inspector saw the same thing. Tiamat. The word, the world, were suddenly all I could think of. Tiamat, Tiamat, Tiamat. . . .

  “Inspector.” He nodded, but all he said was “I think we both realize that your work has not been up to standard in recent months.” He came directly to the point, as usual.

  I stood a little straighter, forcing myself to meet his gaze. “Yes, sir.”

  He let his fingertips run over the touchboard of his terminal, throwing random messages onto its screen, as he did sometimes when he was distracted. Or maybe the messages weren’t random. “You obviously served very competently on Tiamat, to have risen to the rank of Inspector in so short a time. But that doesn’t surprise me, since you were a Technician of the second rank. . . . ” He was also a Kharemoughi, like most high officers in the force.