World's End

Page 59

He shrugged again. "You never know. And you don't want to know the ones who are glad to see you. . . .

Why?"

"I just wondered/' I answered lamely. To even try to explain my real reason for being here at this point seemed absurd. Ang walked away from the rover, away from us. I felt a kind of helpless fatalism settle over me as I watched him go, looking out into the wasteland.

World's End was far vaster and more desolate than I had ever imagined. And yet I had to reach Fire Lake, and I

needed Ang to do it. I tried to tell myself that once we found his treasure, I could convince the others to search for my brothers in return for my share. ... I tried not to wonder what would happen if my share actually made me rich enough to buy back the family estates

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myself.

I started to climb into the rover's cab to take some readings, but Spadrin caught my arm, jerking me back and around.

"What are you really here for? It isn't to get rich." His hand probed the tendons of my elbow and found a nerve.

I gasped and swore. "Damn you! I told you never to touch me--" My voice slid away from me.

"Or what?" Spadrin blocked my escape with his outstretched arm. "You'll report me? You'll have me arrested?

Who's going to back you up? I'll tell you who."

He grinned. "No one, Blue. No one." He stepped back, letting his arm drop. "It doesn't matter why you're here, right now. When I really want to know, you'll tell me; just like Ang. Gedda." He spoke the word very softly, deliberately, before he walked away.

I sat down on the step of the cab. I sat there for a long 73

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JOAND. VINGE

time, staring at the desolation that surrounded me. But my eyes saw snow, not stones, and a circle of pale-faced barbarians with eyes the color of the sky. Tiamat's sky; Tiamat's people--the outlaws who had taken a police inspector captive in the frozen wilderness outside Carbuncle, who had degraded and tortured him.... The one called Taryd Roh, who had taught their prisoner that pride was no defense against pain; who knew how to use his hands the way Spadrin did. He had used them on a man trapped like an animal in a cage ... a man who had begged, who had wept, who had crawled to please him

. . . who would have done anything he asked. Anything.