Read Walk to the End of the World for Free Online

via Bayo with whatever they’ve lifted in Lammintown, including some packets of prime lammin that are missing from storage. The third one is the DarkDreamer d Layo, who’s long overdue for burning. The price on his head is enough points to buy you free of your duties for a five-year.’
    The ferryman took off his grimy cap and scratched his head. He squinted down the coast toward the next pylon, and the ones beyond that; they marched parallel to the beach in single file as far as the eye could see.
    ‘Who says I don’t do my job right?’ he demanded suddenly.
    ‘What man in the Chesters? Or is it just you ’Wares that say it?’
    The Senior’s bristling eyebrows rose. ‘I didn’t criticize the way you do your job – ’
    ‘Then what’s this talk about getting me off my boat? You trying to score me off, Senior? Taking advantage of a rough working lad that’s been at sea too long?’
    Turning on his subordinate, the Senior curtly ordered him to get the Rovers out of earshot of the discussion. The older man plainly appreciated the difficulties of his position, and he was giving himself time to think. He could hardly send for a Chester Senior, for he would incur enormous humiliation for himself and his company by appealing for help in dealing with an uppity Junior.
    The Senior leaned out over the piling and said balefully, ‘A man who helps a thief is worse than a thief, in these lean times. You might remember that you are no Pennelton, to walk off this boat in Bayo and sleep safe for the rest of the five-year with the whole coast between us. You’ll be coming back here on your return run, and when you do, I’ll have your standing stripped. You’re compounding an injury done my company on its own work-turf, and that’s injury to all. It will cost the Chesters a lot to make it good. It will certainly cost them you.
    ‘Think about that, Junior, and consider: who should pay the price of theft, you or the thieves?’
    ‘There’s a lot of things lying crooked between the ’Wares and the Chesters, Senior. Maybe it’s time it all got put straight. Then we’d
find out who owed whom.’
    Without another word, the Senior turned and stalked off, with his entourage hurrying after him.
    ‘Go stick it up a fem,’ Hak muttered. Giving Kelmz a sour grin, he stumped off toward the winch deck, shouting at the men standing there. They leaped up onto the winch housing and laid hold of the handles with their gauntleted hands.
    D Layo sighed. ‘Well, Captain,’ he said, ‘I suppose I must grant you some usefulness after all.’

4
    No Seniors rode the ferries, except occasionally as passengers. Skilled administrators (some were even literate), they were in charge of record-keeping ashore. Aboard the ferries, the older Juniors were responsible for the crew, passengers and cargo between dockings. One-eyed Hak had been crew chief on the coastal run since the beginning of the five-year.
    The ferry itself was a converted river craft which had replaced the legendary ocean-goer lost long ago. The story was that a Senior had insisted on taking Rovers on a sea trip with him and that one of them had gone rogue and cut the cable. The ferry had drifted out onto the empty immensity of water and had never been seen again. The largest of the river craft had been altered to take its place, for by that time the building of ships was an art that had vanished with the trees cleared from the Holdfast.
    There were tales, of course, of ships of the Ancients which had been driven by fire and by secret and strange substances that could kill a man on contact. These legends ranked with stories of craft, carrying human cargo, that could hurl themselves through the air for great distances. That had been in the days when the world was so rich in metal that there was plenty for the fashioning of mighty machines.
    In the Holdfast, requests for metal went through the company hierarchies to the Board, which might pass them on to the town of ‘Troi. Not