World's End

Page 6

said to myself, "It's not your problem."

I looked through the gateway, feeling as if someone were watching me. But the shuttered whiteness of the street was empty; the buildings lay dazed in the insufferable humidity of the early afternoon. I stood there awhile longer, feeling the sweat crawl down my chest beneath the coarse cloth of my loose blue tunic; suddenly

I longed for the security of a uniform. My head began to throb with the silent rhythm of the heat... and

JOAN D. VINGE

all at once the whiteness of the street seemed to shimmer and re-form as endless fields of snow.

A mirage, a hallucination

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--I've seen it a hundred times. You'd think a sane man would be able to put it out of his mind, after so long. ... I hunched my shoulders, feeling a chill as I went on through the gate.

The first thing I did in the town was buy a sun helmet and a drink of cold water--they don't give away anything here, not even water. This is the Company's town, as the shopkeeper informed me, not a resort. The conglomerate that controls World's End is known as Universal Processing Consolidated, back in Foursgate. But out here they are simply the Company, the only, and they've grown bloated and corrupt on their monopolistic exploitation. Their presence is everywhere as you walk the streets--on signs, on people's lips, on their dreary uniform coveralls. No one looks at anyone else for longer than they have to here; but I still felt as though hidden eyes followed me constantly. ¡

This town seems to have no name. It ceitainly has no individual identity. It exists to serve the Company, as a supply center and as a bottleneck for the countless fortune hunters drawn to World's End year after year--all of them certain they'll be the ones to strike it rich. The Company tolerates a limited number of independent prospectors who want to explore the wilderness, who are

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willing to run risks that even the Company won't in searching out resources. It takes no responsibility for their fates, but it takes half of their profits, if any. They get their permits here; I suppose I'll have to enquire about that.

World's End is an obsession for too many of them, the fools. I suppose it's worthy, even fitting, that it should be. World's End is a canker at the heart of Number Four's largest continent, millions of kilometers of terrain that are still virtually unknown after centuries of Hege

WORLD S END

monic control. There's been good reason to explore it, and to believe in the tales of fortunes for Page 7

the taking; the

Company is proof enough of that. The profits they've taken out of the wastes have made Universal Processing more powerful on Number Four than anything but the Planetary Council. Rich ores lie hidden out there, veins of precious minerals, fist-sized gemstones--unimaginable wealth.

But while the wasteland flaunts its treasures, it defies human efforts to fully exploit them. Even the Company

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is powerless in the end, in World's End. At the center of the wasteland isFireLake , a vast sea of molten rock seeping up out of the planet's core like blood from a wound. Official reports would have one believe that it's no more than a weak spot in the planetary crust. But they don't--can't--explain the bizarre electromagnetic phenomena that spread out fromFireLake : distortions that corrupt instrumental readings and turn their carefully collected data into gibberish. There are half a hundred unofficial explanations as well, which claim that FireLakehides everything from a black hole the size of an atom to the gateway to hell.

None of the explanations satisfies me any better than having no explanation at all does. Ever since I've been on

Number Four I've thought that if they'd bring in the best equipment--and Kharemoughi Technicians to operate it decently--they'd get the truth. The Company has poured fortunes into a solution and come away with nothing. Even the sibyls couldn't give them an answer --and sibyls are supposed to be able to answer any question.

Probably they just haven't asked the right ones.

If a decent answer existed, there wouldn't be any mystery to confound the Company or lure an endless stream of self-deluded wretches into itself and swallow them

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whole. Hundreds of people disappear out here every year, and are never heard from again. . . .

JOAN D. VINGE

If a decent answer existed, I wouldn't be here, waiting to follow them. I don't belong in this sweltering hole, with a lot of bloody fools and fanatics, all searching for an escape from responsibility or from the past; for a handout from fate, for answers without questions. I'm not like them. I have no choice, duty and family honor demand it.

My brothers are the self-deluded fools. They've been missing out there for the better part of a year now.

Difficult to believe, when it seems like only yesterday that I looked up and saw them standing before me, as unexpected as ghosts. I can still hear their voices, every word of the incredulity that passed between them as they saw the scars on my wrists. "Gedda. Gedda ..." they whispered, repeating the hateful name that I so justly deserved.

I turned my back on them, staring out at the city through the windows of my office, waiting until their voices died of shame.

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