World's End

Page 69

day 54. day 55?

The only thing I really know for sure is that we finally reached the place where Ang found the solii. It was a couple of mornings ago; I was spelling

Ang at the controls, to keep from going crazy with itching. It was almost midday when I began to see a line of hills ahead. Clouds of mist lay in their folds, like lint in pockets. To see fog lying on the land was more than my eyes could believe--after so many days in world's end, I thought it was an hallucination. I was still waiting for it to disappear when Ang came stumbling forward, with a reeking fesh stick in his hand. I turned as I heard him, and saw his eyes widen as he looked through the windshield.

He was excited; it was the first time since we began this journey that I remembered seeing any positive emotion on his face. Then he turned back and swore at me. "Why the hell didn't you call me?"

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"I thought it wasn't real," I said, scratching at a scab.

"It's real." He nodded, and wiped sweat from his eyes.

"It's real, all right. This is what we've been looking for."

He sounded relieved. He gestured me up from my seat

and took the controls.

As we drew closer I began to make out foliage on the hills. The spiny fireshrub and stunted thorn trees weren't much, but they were better than the last plant life I remembered--the bloated, unwholesome flora of the jungle. I strained for the first glimpse of the blue87

JOAN D. VINGE

water lake my imagination had set deep in some twisting valley.

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But as we entered the hills, in the blaze of noon, the mists still clung unnaturally to the land ahead of us.

Looking past Ang's shoulder, I asked, "What's up there in that fog?"

"Hellfire and brimstone," he said, with a bark of laughter. "Geothermal area." We entered the wall of fog.

The temperature fell unexpectedly as we traveled deeper into the hills. Clouds of sulphurous mist poured from craters large enough to swallow the rover whole.

Their rims were stained with minerals--ochres of yellow and red, greens, whites. The anemic gray Page 70

ground we passed over breathed fog; droplets of condensation glistened on leaves and branches, and splattered our windshield.

Eventually, after hours of silent journeying, we reached a vast, shallow lake--but not the lake I'd imagined.

Its steaming surface was perfectly transparent, but mineral springs tinted its depths with delicate pinks and blues, like blossoms under glass. Ang stopped the rover on the shore and said,

"There's a geyser somewhere around here. Goes off about once a day. I need it to give me a bearing on the place where I found the solii. We'll camp here tonight, find it tomorrow."

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"Here?" Spadrin said, and swore. He'd come forward finally, and the view through the dome was enough to startle him out of his plughead stupor. I'd watched him grow more and more uneasy as we entered this place.

He's obviously never been so intimate before with the unpleasant reality of a planet's surface. "I don't like it here."

"What's the matter?" I said. "Is hell too close for comfort?"

He swore at me, this time, and I saw a faint smile pull up the corners of Ang's mouth. I let myself smile, for the

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WORLD S END

first time in days, but only after Spadrin turned away.

"What the--?" Spadrin's back muscles bunched as he looked out at the steaming lake again.

"Ang! What the hell is that?"

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Ang leaned forward in his seat; so did I. A line of figures was coming toward us through the mist along the lake shore. They moved with the slow, jerky progress of thorn trees come to life. My mind tried to make their shapes human, and failed. I echoed Spadrin: "What are those?"

Ang pushed eagerly up out of his seat. "Cloud ears, by the gods! Cloud ears." They gathered around the rover in a crowd of disordered limbs. As they peered in, Ang reached for the door-release.

Spadrin gripped his arm, jerking him away. "You're not letting those things in here!"

Ang pulled free. "You think I'm a fool? They're harmless.

. . . I'm going out to them."