World's End

Page 42

I looked at the three Company men. One of them was a burly man wearing the orange coveralls of a supervisor.

The others wore plain white--or what must have been white once. It struck me how hopelessly impractical it was to make them wear white in a place like this. To keep the cheap, untreated fabric from staining was im50

WORLD S END

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possible . . . and every new stain only reinforced the futility of trying.

The three of them looked at me with dark, disinterested eyes. It was hard to tell their faces apart, and Ang hadn't bothered to mention names. I gave them the specs on the grid I wanted, and the man in orange shrugged.

"Maybe," he said grudgingly, as though he disliked the whole idea. A grid was not a small or inexpensive piece of equipment. "He can come with me and take a look, I suppose." He glanced at the others. "Randet? Fila long?"

One shrugged, the other shook his head. The one who'd shrugged came with us. Ang and the other man stayed where they were, lighting fesh. Smoking is strictly forbidden here. I was glad to get away from them.

I followed the other men along the catwalks, looking out at the blackwater swamp that lay beyond the refinery.

The rotting sentinels of the jungle's edge waded like skeletons in the stagnant lake. "I'm Gedda,"

I said.

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The supervisor glanced at me. When it elicited no further response, I asked, "You have names?"

The supervisor frowned. "Ngeran. This is Randet.

Ang said you're a Kharemoughi." It was merely a classification.

I nodded, and we walked on in silence. The others never bothered to look out, or down; they moved like sleepwalkers. I watched the sun disappear into the fog.

Ngeran led us back down into the maze of buildings, stopping again and again to check on some project. After a while I began to suspect that he was stalling, probably hoping he could force me to lose patience and give up on the grid. But knowing the difference that grid would make in my life gave me the patience of the dead.

Everywhere he stopped, the workers would gather around and stare at me, sullen and uncertain.

I made

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