Joan Vinge: World's End

"Ten for the first week's residency permit here in town."

"Ten?"

"Fifteen, for every week after." He looked at me. This time I kept my mouth shut.

"The clearances and permissions for you to actually enter World's End to prospect--or for whatever purposes you claim here--are more complicated. They take

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time, they've got to pass through a lot of hands.... Some of the security people might want to interview you in person--" He raised his eyebrows significantly; I bit my tongue. "Just to get you started, with all the data you're missing, is going to cost you fifty." He put out his hand.

My own hand tightened around my credit disc. "In that case, before I pay you anything, I at least want proof that my brothers actually went into World's End. I expect you can look that up in your datafiles."

"It's not permitted--"

"For a fee." I held my credit out in front of him.

"I suppose I can make an exception. Names?" I gave him their names and my credit, and he went away again.

After another interminable wait he came back. He shoved a printout through at me, as if he knew I would only accept hard copy.

The data told me that my brothers had gotten their permits from the Company, and their clearances, and

-L6

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WORLD S END

their supplies. How much it had cost them was not listed. They had gone into World's End about a month after I saw them. That was all. "Is this really all of it?

Can't you tell me how they were traveling, or which direction they went, at least?"

He shook his head. "You got what you asked for." He handed me back my credit disc.

I glanced at my balance, and grimaced. "I guess I did."

He frowned; my sarcasm was not lost on him, at least.

"When can I expect to get my clearances?"

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"Come back in a couple of days. Maybe something will be ready by then. There'll be more fees due." He took a long look at me. "But if I were you, I wouldn't count on leaving here soon." He shut the window with another crystalline note, and walked away.

And every time I go there Morang tells me, "Come

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back in a couple of days." There are always more fees, but nothing to show for them. And every time I go in he laughs up his sleeve at me again. I'm a marked man. I know I'm not playing this game right . . . but damn it, I wasn't born to sycophantry and bribery, the way everyone in this town seems to have been!

If only there were some other way into World's End

--but the Company monitors its perimeters with heavier surveillance than most lawful governments do. This is the only rational way.

My brothers came this way, and they escaped this bureaucratic maze, at least. There has to be a way for me to find their trail from here, and follow it. Patience, that's all I need. Perseverance.

Logic.

Damn it! Bug spray.

1.7

day 14.

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Today began like yesterday, and the day before. I

made the ritual bureaucratic homages one more time, trying to get my clearances--getting nothing but heat stroke and a thirst. After that I started back to C'uarr's place in the Quarter; another ritual programmed into my feet by now. I swore I wouldn't go to C'uarr's today . . . swore I'd be sick to my stomach if I even saw another glass of his rotgut liquor. But I went there anyway.

The sudden darkness of the bar is as blinding as the street. I always stop inside the doorway, pushing back the sunshield of my helmet, blinking until my eyes can fill in the tableau of the barroom regulars. The handful of outsiders in their foreign clothes stand out among the Company workers like bits of colored glass in a bed of smooth white stones. Always the same strangers-- trapped like me in this purgatory I've begun to think of as the Wait.

"Still here, pilgrim?" a hulking Company guard asked me as he crowded me aside from the entrance. He stopped, grinning down at the indignation I couldn't quite disguise. A lifetime won't be enough time to make me suffer gracefully the insults of inferiors. "How long's it been for you?" he asked. When I didn't answer, he

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said, "Well, maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not." He laughed, showing yellow teeth.

I stood out of reach of his meathook hands. A few

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WORLD S END

days back I saw two guards casually break all the fingers of a prospector they claimed was cheating at five-and twenty. The Company is its own law when you reach World's End, and the law changes on a whim or with a mood. The uniform law of the Hegemony is only a memory here.

The guard moved on, and I went to the bar. I ordered a drink too loudly, and had to endure C'uarr's smirking, slow-motion response. C'uarr, the one-eyed, is as bitter and corrosive as his poisonous liquor. He's not a local-- from Samathe, probably, by the name. I used to wonder what kept him here, when he plainly hates this town and what he's doing, just like he hates everyone who comes

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into this place. As the days passed and stagnation began to eat at me I started to think he was a parasite who lived on the misery of the Wait more than on any money it brought him. Today it occurred to me that he stays simply out of inertia.

C'uarr slammed the squat glass down on the filthy bar;

droplets of red liquor bloodied his hand. His hand reached out, palm up as always. I flipped him a marker.

"Any word?" I asked as I took my drink. I'd paid him to ask around about my brothers. But the question was rhetorical by now; I turned away even before I heard the answer. It was always no. I felt C'uarr's stare follow me, full of mockery and dark speculation. He's like an animal

--he senses that I'm not really the same as the others.

I can tell when he looks at me.

The low-ceilinged room stinks of mildew and fesh sticks. No one else bothers to glance up as I make my way to a bench at an empty corner table. I've faded into the background, just like they have. Pilgrims, the Company workers call them, and laugh. They make their pilgrimage to this place from all over the planet, from all over the Hegemony--seekers after legendary wealth, hidden treasure--all believers in the same religion, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter,

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JOAND. VINGE

greed. Most of them end up in this trap instead, caught like bugs in a bottle while C'uarr and the Company bleed them dry.

I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting, staring, nursing that one drink until C'uarr threatened to throw me out. I ordered another, but didn't let myself drink it. The cheap, ruby-red local liquor is fermented from some kind of fungus. It's called ouvung. A dead worm drifts in every bottle.

The first time I took a sip of it I gagged-- and wondered whether the worm wasn't really there as a testament to the stupidity of its drinkers. I got used to it, just as they all do.

Finally the sky beyond the doorway began to darken.

I ate another cheap, repulsive meal, and went back to my bug-infested room to sleep for the night. I've spent more on bug spray and sonic screens since I got here than I

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have on food. But I have to get some sleep ... so that

I can get up and perform this futile round over again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. .