World's End

Page 29

"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

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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.

35

JOAN D. VINGE

"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

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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."