Joan Vinge - World's End

Chief Inspector's face.

"Come back to the force, Gundhalinu," he murmured.

"But only if you can come back without scars."

Without scars . . . without the past. What's the point of having the scars removed? It would only be one more act of hypocrisy. I'd still see them. And so would he. Life scars us with its random motion. Only death is perfect.

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day 22.

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ods, I can't believe what I did to myself yesterday.

How could I have done something that asinine?

I was sick half the night. I've never been drunk like that. It's this place. It must be.

This morning I swore to myself that if nothing changed today I'd give up this insanity. I'll never know if I meant it this time or not... because something finally happened.

I was back in C'uarr's place, as usual. A local man came over to me where I sat, nursing my drink and my queasy stomach. Finally I realized that he was interested in me, and I looked up at him.

He was tall and heavyset, closing in on middle age, with skin the color of leather and straight black hair. A Company man, I thought

... an ex-Company man. His dingy coveralls had no insignia or identification, only white patches that showed they'd been there once. A tarnished religious medal dangled against his chest; bitter lines bracketed

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his mouth. "You Gedda?" he asked.

I found my jaw clenching with resentment. I've gotten too used to this enforced solitude. I worked my tongue loose, and said, "Yes." I go by Gedda here. It suits me better than my own name, and it hides my identity from chance encounters. My real identity is a liability in a place like this . . . and besides that, meaningless.

The man sat down without waiting for an invitation.

I frowned, but said nothing. He stared at me, assessing

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JOAN D. VINGE

me in turn. There was something disturbing about his gaze. "I hear you're a Kharemoughi. A Tech?"

I nodded. "I was once."

The hooded eyes dropped to the scars on my wrists.

"What happened?"

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I turned my hands over, palms down on the damp tabletop. 'I got tangled up in Blue." The standard phrase for trouble with the police. I saw his mouth quirk.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Waiting."

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"Tired of it?"

I felt my skin prickle. I had come to the end of believing that I would ever get permission to enter World's

End, ever master the rituals of whim and bribery that have confounded me all the while I've been here. And now this stranger seemed to be offering me clearance on a ceremonial platter. "What do you want?"

He said, "I want to go prospecting. My vehicle is a

Company junker. They don't think it can be repaired. I

think all it needs is somebody who knows his ass from a socket. I hear you Techs can fix anything. If you can fix this, we'll go together."

That was all he wanted. I let myself laugh. "If I can't

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fix it, no one can." I offered my hand. The stranger shook it, after the local custom. I asked,

"What do I call you?"

"Ang," he said.

I finished my drink, out of habit, and we left the Wait together.

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day 23.

E could hardly believe my luck this morning, when

Ang actually showed up at my room with every permit and clearance I needed to get into World's End.

After so many weeks of maddening bureaucracy, it was like being set free from prison. I didn't bother to ask him how he'd done it--there's only one way. No matter; it seemed like a miracle.

I should have known my good fortune was too perfect to be true. This afternoon Ang took me to see the vehicle

--a triphibian rover, in bad shape but not impossible, if

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he can get me the parts I'll need. That's not the trouble.

The trouble is that there are three of us, not two. Today I met the third man.

He seemed about as surprised to see me as I was to see him, even though he'd apparently been expecting me.

He was waiting in a junkyard when I arrived with Ang, kicking at the fungal creepers that grew up through the sea of scrap metal.

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Ang snorted with laughter as he saw the man kicking and cursing, as if discomfiture with the repulsive flora of this place were somehow amusing. "It'll all be back tomorrow,"

he said, to no one.

"Who's that?" I asked. The other man was peering out from under the wide rim of his sun helmet. His skin and hair were the color of paste, as if he was never outdoors by choice. His blunt, tight-muscled body gleamed with sunblock lotion and sweat. I distrusted him on sight.

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JOAN D. VINGE

"Spadrin," Ang said, or rather called out. "This is our mechanic."

"You mean he's a partner?" I asked. I was more than a little irritated. Ang hadn't mentioned a third partner, either this morning or when he'd asked me to join him.

He'd offered me an equal share of anything we found-- but he never mentioned that it would be a three-way split.

Ang didn't bother to answer me, now that the answer was obvious. And Spadrin was staring back at me in a way that made me forget about Ang's shortcomings.

"This is Gedda," Ang told him.

Spadrin started visibly when he heard the name, but then his frown came back. "You got a Kharemoughi?

You said we were going to get some Company hand--"

He broke off. "Why?"

"He was the best I could do." Ang shrugged, but it wasn't an easy motion. 1 wondered whether his comment

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was a compliment. His hands were making fists inside the pockets of his coveralls.

Spadrin glared at Ang, disbelief plain on his face. Then he looked me up and down pointedly, as if I were an inanimate object.

I stared back at him, reconfirming my first impression.

He was clearly out of place. His clothes were made of a shining, silken fabric, and might have passed for stylish summer wear in some climate-controlled metropolis; but they were absurdly impractical here. The tattoos running up his bare arms told me a lot more, although I recognized only a few of the designs and symbols. They all have their separate meanings: They Page 24

illustrate a man's life history in the Hegemony's underworld. Spadrin was a career criminal.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked me.

"The same thing you are," I said.

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WORLD S END

He didn't believe it, any more than I did. He looked at Ang. "I don't want him."

"I do." Ang turned away abruptly. "Gedda," he said to me, pointing at the rusty metal hulk rising up beside us, "take a look at it, tell me what you need."

I moved warily past Spadrin, and began to inspect the vehicle. I heard the two of them arguing behind me as if I couldn't hear them; listened while trying to seem like I wasn't listening. Spadrin used the worldspeech of

Number Four with surprising fluency. Anyone can learn a language quickly with an enhancer, but only someone with some intelligence will speak it well. Spadrin is not stupid . . . and I won't forget it. At last he turned and strode away, cursing, and I finished my inspection in peace.

"Well?" Ang said, when I climbed down from the cab.