"Paying a visit to the Underworld," I said irritably. "I think I know now where you people get your ideas about damnation--being forced to repeat the same futile, pointless task forever."
"What are you talking about?"
"Somewhere down in the bowels of this installation, I saw men hauling mud in buckets from a pool. In buckets. What the hell is going on here? What possible reason could there be--"
"Convicts," he said. "They're convicts. The government sends them out here, and the Company has to put them to work."
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"Hauling mud? That's absurd. That isn't work, it's--"
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"Punishment." He shrugged.
"But, ye gods, man, it doesn't help anybody! It can't possibly be efficient--a pipe would do the work ten times as well. And you could train those men to do something useful."
He stood up, towering over me. "There are more honest people than jobs out here as it is. You want more of them put out of work so a thief or a murderer can learn a trade?" The question was rhetorical. "By the Aurant, you sound like my wife! Nothing ever suited her, either."
I stared at him, amazed to think that he was actually
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married. He'd never mentioned a wife.... I'd never even wondered about his past. With some people it's easy to
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forget how much of another person's life lies hidden from view.
Ang laughed once, glaring at me with his head bent to one side. "What is it with you, Gedda?
What are you really after out here?" This time he actually wanted to know.
I didn't answer, afraid to tell the truth, afraid he would leave me behind if I told him now that I wanted to go to Fire Lake.
"Yeah, Gedda," Spadrin goaded, "what are you running away from . . . what's your crime?" He pushed himself up again, watching me with hard eyes.
I looked down. "Impersonating a police officer." I turned away toward the lockers.
"Well, that suits." Ang's voice was sour.
I turned back. "What do you mean by that?"
"It suits your Technocrat arrogance. You Techs can strut around Kharemough like tin gods, but your gods or ancestors or whatever the hell you worship don't own
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this world. You make some damn good machinery, and you know how to tend it. But I heard you won't even talk to half the people on your own planet because they don't meet some half-assed standard of genetic purity.
And you come in here and tell me the Company's not humane enough to criminals!"
It was the longest speech I'd heard from Ang since I'd met him. I couldn't begin to justify the complexities of
Kharemoughi social structure to someone like him; I
didn't even try. I merely said, "My being wrong doesn't make you right." His mouth snapped shut. I went on, as reasonably as I could, "If you find the Company so eminently fair, why aren't you still working for them?"
The frown setted more deeply into his face. He sat down again, tugging at his religious medal.
He said, "I
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JOAN D. VINGE
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got sick of never getting rich ... of finding more ways for some faceless bloodsuckers to get rich instead." He stared at the walls of the room, spoke to them, as if his voice could somehow reach through them into the depths of the installation. "My wife used to work here.
She left, years ago, because she couldn't stand the Company anymore. She took my son. Said I was wasting my life. She was just like the Company: never satisfied. She didn't understand why I wouldn't leave. She didn't understand about World's End." He shook his head, as if he were shaking it free of ghosts. "No one understood why I go out there. Because you have to go out there to know her better than any human being. . . ." For a moment I thought he was still talking about his wife.
"For years I saw the independents, those skywheelers and losers, trying to do my job ... and some of them doing it! Getting rich off of World's End, instead of me.
But I always knew she'd show me her heart someday.
And then I--" He broke off, glancing around him. "We'll all be rich. I promise you that much."
He actually smiled.
It only made his face more expressionless.
"You have a real plan?" Spadrin asked. "What is it?"
I touched the pouch where I kept my brothers' picture, feeling tension tighten in my chest. If Ang had a definite
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plan in mind, that would make it much harder to get him to cooperate with my search.
But Ang pointed at the walls, shaking his head. He said in a whisper, "Not yet."
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Spadrin frowned, but he nodded. I sighed, waiting to show Ang the picture, and tell him the truth as well. This was not the time. I wondered when the right time would ever come.
"What about the grid?" Ang asked me.
I shook my head. "They haven't got what we need."
"You're sure? You're really sure?"
I nodded wearily.
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He muttered a curse, but his expression didn't change, as if it didn't really make any difference to him. "We'll leave at dawn, then." He looked back at me. "One piece of advice, Gedda. Don't try to find reasons for the things you see in World's End. Because there aren't any."
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day 39.
We're crossing a range of mountains now. The jungles are finally well below us, thank the gods, but nothing has gotten better except the smell. At least Ang knows the passes; if he didn't, I wouldn't be able to tell the trail from the wilderness. If we'd only gotten that damned grid. . ..
Oh, the hell with it. We crawl; I might as well get used to it.
We left most of the rain behind, along with the jungle.
Ang says it just gets drier from here on. He ordered us to conserve water, even with the recycler.
Unfortunately he seems to consider cleanliness in close quarters a luxury.
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I'm damned if I'll grow a beard.
Spadrin seems to have rights that Ang doesn't even give to himself. What the hell right does anyone have to take up storage space with crates of liquor and a full spectrum video receiver when we barely have room to move inside the rover as it is? On top of that, he's a plughead. He spends half his time buried in that obscene device, overtaxing the rover's power systems. He complains that he's "bored" without his addictions. Ang's the only one who can pilot in this terrain, leaving Spadrin with nothing much to do. Ang seems to feel it's safer to let him have Page 50
what he wants. Maybe he's right;
Spadrin's safer in a stupor than he is alert and restless.
This morning he walked in on me as I was using the toilet in the momentary privacy of the rover's sleeping area. He looked me up and down, smirking at my annoy60
WORLD S END
anee, and said, "So you impersonated a Blue. Ang was
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right: I'll bet you wore that uniform like you were born in it. You look like you're still wearing it--"