“I’ll be right down,” he said, and shut it off before Niburu could reply. He pulled on the sturdy, lightweight tunic and pants, the heavy boots, that Gundhalinu had recommended he wear; locked his remote onto his utility belt, and put on the sun helmet he had become accustomed to wearing all the time. He picked up the bag which held everything personal that he owned—because one way or another he did not expect to return to this room—and went out the door without looking back.
Niburu and Ananke were waiting for him in the hired hovercraft. He checked their clothing with a cursory glance; gave their faces a longer look as he got in. They looked tired and nervous, as if they hadn’t slept much either, and that worrying about today—or tomorrow, or the next day—was what had kept them awake. “What’s bothering you?” he snapped, knowing he ought to feel the same way, but incapable of it when the drug had hold of him.
“Everything,” Niburu said glumly. Ananke said nothing, holding the quoll close, stroking its protuberant nose while it burbled mindlessly.
“Lighten up, for gods’ sakes,” Reede said, frowning.
“You mean, ‘it’s not the end of the world’?” Niburu asked sarcastically. “Yes it is.”
Reede grunted, watching the Project and the town drift by below; wondering whether it was actually the prospect of going into the unpredictable wilderness that was bothering them, or the fear of what they might be forced to do in order to get out again. He did not ask, because he would not be able to give them an answer that would make them feel any better. He looked away from them, shifting restlessly in his seat.
Gundhalinu was, predictably, waiting for them when they arrived at the departure point. Beside him was the insectoid triphibian rover that would carry them all to their fate, and the floating sledge they would tow behind them, which would carry the bulk of their equipment. Reede shook his head and smiled; the smile he saw reflected in the window was not a pleasant one.
Niburu dropped them precisely onto the departure field. Reede climbed out, glancing toward the rover, where the two government troopers were still loading the last of their supplies aboard. Or one of them was, anyway—the kid, Trooper Saroon, or whatever his name was. The sergeant, Hundet, stood hands locked behind his back, watching the kid struggle with loads he probably could have moved one-handed; exerting effort only once, to curse and kick the kid’s butt when he dropped a crate.
‘Reede turned as Gundhalinu came up beside him. “Sergeant!” Gundhalinu said sharply, in Fourspeech. “Give Saroon a hand, not your foot, if you want things to go faster!”
Hundet looked back at him, and Reede saw the black resentment that filled the man’s eyes as he slowly and sullenly moved to pick up a piece of equipment. Hundet was the kind who wouldn’t forget a rebuke like that, ever. Reede didn’t bother to say the obvious, now that it was too late.
“Thank the gods we’re making this trip by air,” Oundhalinu murmured.
Reede raised his eyebrows. “Why in seven hells would you even consider doing it any other way?”
Gundhalinu shrugged, smiling faintly. “The first time I went into World’s End, we did it the hard way, in a broken-down junker with a defective repeller grid. We had to travel overland the whole godforsaken, hellish …” His voice faded; something came into his eyes that could never be put into words.
Reede glanced away at Niburu and Ananke, slightly unnerved. “How long did it take you?”
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I really don’t know. After a while, even time didn’t make sense anymore.”
Reede said nothing, unable to think of a response.
“How can we be sure of how long we stay, then?” Niburu asked, half frowning. “What if we stay too long, and your security people … give us a hard time?” Reede suspected that was the least of the fears behind the question.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “It won’t be a problem this time,” he said.
“Because you can talk to the Lake?” Reede said.
Gundhalinu looked back at him steadily. “Yes,” he said. “Because I can talk to the Lake.”
Reede felt the sudden joint stares of Niburu and Ananke pulling at him, asking him anxious questions, dunning him with silent protest. “You’re saying we’ll be perfectly safe, then?” he asked, for them.
“No.” Gundhalinu smiled ruefully. “No one is perfectly safe, Kullervoeshkrad. At least, not in this universe.”
Reede looked at him sharply; grinned, as suddenly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. He ignored the mixed expressions that were his response.
The last of their equipment was loaded on board, and they chose their seats in the rover’s womblike interior. Gundhalinu took the copilot’s seat beside Niburu, up front where he would have the fullest view possible of the terrain they were about to pass over. Reede sat diagonally behind him, next to Ananke, relegating the two troopers to the windowless cargo area. Gundhalinu had said the trip should take only a few hours. If everything went all right. Reede couldn’t keep his own mind from adding that unspoken caveat. He looked out the side port, leaned forward impatiently, peering ahead between the seats for a view through the windshield as he listened with an earbug to Perimeter Control’s field clearance sequence.
At last he felt them begin to rise; freed from the suffocating confinement of civilized authority, heading into the wilderness, the unknown, the uncontrollable-chaos made visible. He felt a weight fall away from him, felt as if he were rising himself, uncoiling, being reborn… . Ananke glanced at him sidelong, his eyes full of doubt. Reede took a deep breath, and withdrew into his thoughts.
He looked out and down, seeing the bloated graygreen flora of the jungle that lay below like an unwholesome carpet. They followed the sullen yellow ribbon of a river he did not know the name of, like hunters tracking the glistening slime spoor of a whillp. … He realized that the only images which came to mind to describe what he saw were vaguely repulsive ones; tried to think of images that were not morbid, and failed. He wondered whether there was something about the physical appearance of this place that a human brain instinctively found repulsive, or whether he was just letting himself be sucked into the mood of the others around him
“How many trips have you made into World’s End, Commander Gundhalinu?” Niburu asked, probably trying to keep his own mind off the view.
“This is my sixth,” Gundhalinu murmured, his words barely audible. Something that looked like a refinery flashed by below them, in a sudden, unexpected clearing Reede felt his shoulders tighten; he relaxed as the obscene overabundance of plant life filled his view again.
“That’s the last sign of human habitation we’ll see,” Gundhalinu said, almost sounding as if he was glad himself to put it behind him.
Reede looked ahead, past Gundhalinu’s shoulder, seeing something new in the distance. Up ahead the forest ended, like the shore of the sea, on the lower reaches of a mountain range. The mountains seemed almost dreamlike, silvered by the humid haze of the rainforests. He kept watching them, sure that the image he thought he saw would dissipate at the next eyeblink into cloudforms, mirage.
But it did not. The sun rose higher in the sky, burning away the mists, illuminating the interior of the rover and the silent, pensive faces around him; and moment by moment the shimmering unreality in the distance became more real, became a forbidding barrier, a warning.