Joan Vinge - World's End

. .

Sometimes I think I must be crazy to stay here . . .

whenever I consider the odds against finding my brothers'

trail in all that nothingness, in all of World's End. No one I've questioned here even remembers seeing them.

Why in the name of a hundred ancestors couldn't HK

have married decently, and had half a dozen heirs?

Maybe one of them would have been halfway intelligent.

... SB talked him out of it, I'll warrant; the way he talked him out of every other sensible thought he ever had. Though what woman would have either one of them? Even our own mother. . . .

You idiot--if you ever do get clearance from the Company to enter World's End, what the hell will you do with it?

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da* 21.

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Three weeks.

Three weeks in this outhouse, and more money wasted already than I earn in half a year.

Gods, even Tiamat was better than this. So today I celebrated

. . . with a whole bottle of C'uarr's rotgut to keep me company. He must've talked me into it. He cheated me, though. I paid for a full bottle, but he gave me this empty, without even a worm. . . .

Damn it, I know I only had a couple. . . . I'm not a drunkard. I never touch liquor. Drunkenness Page 18

disgusts me. It's a sign of weak character. I hate drunks. I ought to. The gods know I have to deal with enough of them

. . . used to. Not anymore.

Not since a month ago. ... It should have happened years ago. The message from the Chief Inspector on my screen. When I saw it I wanted to run away, like a child, because I knew there was only one reason he'd ask me to report to him in person. But my body got up from behind my desk and took me to him; it made the correct salute, as if my face wasn't betraying it with a look more guilty than a felon's.

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Chief Inspector Savanne is not an easy man to face, even on a viewscreen. He returned my salute, studying me with an uncertainty that was harder to endure than the cold disapproval I'd been expecting.

"Sir--" I began, and bit off the flood of excuses that filled my mouth. I looked down along the blue length of

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my uniform at my boots. I saw a hypocrite and a traitor wearing the clothes of an honest man.

I'm sure the Chief

Inspector saw the same thing. Tiamat. The word, the world, were suddenly all I could think of.

Tiamat, Tiamat, Tiamat. . . .

"Inspector." He nodded, but all he said was "I think we both realize that your work has not been up to standard in recent months." He came directly to the point, as usual.

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I stood a little straighter, forcing myself to meet his gaze. "Yes, sir."

He let his fingertips run over the touchboard of his terminal, throwing random messages onto its screen, as he did sometimes when he was distracted. Or maybe the messages weren't random.

"You obviously served very competently on Tiamat, to have risen to the rank of Inspector in so short a time. But that doesn't surprise me, since you were a Technician of the second rank. . . ." He was also a Kharemoughi, like most high officers in the force.

Were, I swallowed the word like a lump of dry bread.

My hands moved behind my back; I touched my scarred wrists. I could protect my family from shame by staying away from home. But I had never been able to forget my failure; because my people would never forget it, and they were everywhere I went.

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He glanced up, frowning slightly at my surreptitious movement. "Inspector, I know you carry some unpleasant memory from your duty on Tiamat. ... I know you still bear the scars." He looked down again, as if even to mention it embarrassed him. "I don't want to know what

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happened to you there, or why you haven't had the scars removed. But I don't want you to think that I hold what you did against you--"

Or what I failed to do. The very fact that he mentioned

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it at all told me too much. I said nothing. I felt my face flush.

"You've served here on Number Four for nearly five standards, and for most of that time you've kept whatever is troubling you to yourself. Perhaps too much to yourself. ..."

I knew some of the other officers felt that I was aloof and unsociable--and I knew that they were right. But it hadn't mattered, because nothing had seemed to matter much to me since Tiamat. I felt the cold of a long-ago winter seep back into my bones as I stood waiting. I tried

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to remember a face . . . tried not to remember it.

"You've shown admirable self-discipline, until recently.

But after the Wendroe Brethren matter.... It was handled very badly, as I'm sure I don't have to tell you.

The Governor-General complained to me personally about it."

And the Police had to demonstrate the Hegemony's good will. My eyelids quivered with the need to let me stop seeing. But I held his gaze. "I understand, sir. It was my responsibility. My accusations against the Brethren's chamberlain were inexcusable." Even though they were true.

But truth was always the first casualty in our relationship with an onworld government.

Kharemough held the Hegemony together with a fragile net of economic sanctions and self-interested manipulation, because without a hyperlight drive, anything more centralized was impossible. The seven other worlds of the

Hegemony were technically autonomous--Kharemough cultivated their sufferance with hypocritically elaborate care. I knew all of that as well as anyone; I'd learned it on Tiamat. "I should have offered you my resignation immediately. I've had--family difficulties the past few months. My brothers lost . . . are lost in World's End."

I felt the blood rise to my face again, and went on hast

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ily, "I don't offer that as an excuse, only as an explanation."

The Chief Inspector looked at me as though that explained nothing. I couldn't explain even to myself the dreams that had ruined my sleep ever since my brothers came: the ghosts of a thousand dispossessed ancestors;

the face of my father changing into a girl's face as pale as snow; endless fields of snow. ... I would wake up shivering, as if I were freezing cold. "I offer you my resignation now, sir." My voice did not break.

The Chief Inspector shook his head. "That isn't necessary.

Not if you are willing to accept the alternative of a temporary reduction in rank, and an enforced leave of absence until the Governor-General has forgotten this incident. And until your ...

emotional state has regained some kind of equilibrium."

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// only I could forget the past as easily as the Governor-General will forget about me! I only said, faintly, "Thank you, sir.

You show me more consideration than I deserve."

"You've been a good officer. You deserve whatever time it takes to resolve your problems . . .

however you can," he said, uncomfortably. "Rest, enjoy this vacation from your responsibilities.

Get to feel at home on this world." He glanced at me, at the scars on my wrists. "Or perhaps . . .

what you need is to look into your brothers'

disappearance in World's End."

For a moment I felt a black rush of vertigo, as if I were falling-- I shook my head, saw a fleeting frown cross the