World's End

Page 85

"You used that damn joybox again! How long ago?"

Ang dragged Spadrin up from his bunk with a sudden violence that startled me.

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WORLD S END

"Th-three days," Spadrin gasped. "Just three days--"

Ang shoved him down onto the bunk again. "Then it's all ruined! You ruined our food. Why the hell didn't you say something three days ago?"

"I didn't know," Spadrin said sullenly. "How the fuck would I know?"

"You knew you'd blown something, you stupid bastard.

Why didn't you tell Gedda?"

Spadrin glared at me. "He's supposed to take care of that shit himself. It's his fault."

"I can't fix something if I don't know it's out!" I pressed my hands against my stomach and sat down.

"He's right," Ang said, meaning me, for once. "It's your goddamn fault, Spadrin. If we don't have enough supplies to get us to my strike--"

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I looked up at him, and in that moment I realized that he would kill Spadrin, kill us both, if he thought we stood in the way of his obsession. "Listen, Ang," I said, trying to sound calm, "we still have plenty of freeze dried left. We have enough water. If we ration it out we shouldn't have a real problem. You said we were getting close--"

He met my eyes, but he wasn't seeing me. "You can't count on it, out here. You can't count on anything.

..." He picked up the plate of food that he'd dropped when the sickness hit him. He balanced it on his palms like an offering.

"Well, that's life," I said softly, wondering how I would ever reach Fire Lake now. My hands clenched.

"I'll find a way--" I whispered, not meaning to say it aloud.

Ang stared at me, and sanity crept slowly back into his expression. "You're right." He nodded; his mouth twisted into a grimace of irony. "We'll get there. We'll do it on half rations, we'll do it Page 86

on nothing, on our hands and knees, if we have to." He looked at me again, and

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io7

JOAN D. VINGE

at Spadrin hunched miserably on the bunk. Deliberately he wiped the food off the plate onto the floor in front of

Spadrin's feet, and then he twisted the thin metal plate between his heavy hands, crushing it, still looking at us.

He turned and went forward into the cab, as if we were no longer there.

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1w

Ie're still alive; still searching, still following the dead river upstream. We've been in these clown-striped badlands for days.

Today we finally met another pilgrim, here in this twisting maze of canyons. He was leading a huge whillp, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter,

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one of those rubbery, glistening things from Big Blue that secrete acid to suck nourishment out of the rock, and never eat or drink. It was loaded down with sacks and containers, and it oozed along the canyon at barely walking speed.

I couldn't imagine how long the man must have been out here, moving at the whillp's pace. I decided it was too long, because when he saw us he wasn't afraid. He stood in the middle of the dry wash, waving his arms, shouting and grinning through his pale beard as if we were the best thing he'd ever seen.

Ang stopped the rover and we got out. Even the sight of three sweating, filthy, armed men didn't wipe the smile off of his face. Spadrin stood on one side of me; his eyes were narrow and cold. Ang stood on the other; his face was grim with a kind of tension that I'd never seen on it before. I felt my hands clutching my gun too hard--more because of their expressions than the stranger's.

"Halloo, halloo," the stranger shouted, coming toward us with outstretched, empty hands. He started to speak in a foreign language--after a minute I recog

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