Read World’s End for Free Online Page A

and said, slurring, “You goddamn Kharemoughis make me sick. You think the universe’s got nothing better to do than wait
around till you feel like fixing it.”
    I reordered
my tangled instrument belt. My hands ached from the need to make fists. He was
drunk—I could have had him disarmed and flat on his back in seconds, but I
can’t afford to betray my police training. It would only make him more
suspicious of me—and make it ever harder to get the cooperation I need from
Ang. I only said, “I told Ang I’ll finish the work
when he gets me the repeller grid. I never claimed to
be a miracle worker.”
    “Then
you’re the first Tech I ever met who didn’t.” He began to turn away.
    “ Spadrin ,” I said, and watched him turn back. “Don’t ever
touch me again.”
    He grinned,
and spat the iesta pod he’d been chewing on at my
boot.
    I began to
tremble as I watched him go. The emotion was so strong I could taste it, like
vomit. I wanted to ... Gods, what’s wrong with me—letting a degenerate like
that drag me down to his level? Ang must be blind.

day 33.
    Something
happened today, and I don’t know what I to make of it ... except that I want to
make it mean something.
    This
morning I heard Spadrin’s voice at the edge of the scrapyard . I looked out of the rover’s cab, afraid that he
was coming to harass me again. But he was talking with someone else—I saw two
figures swim in the heated air. The other person was a woman. I watched him
push her away suddenly, so hard that she fell. He disappeared into the
yellow-green jungle.
    I crossed
the field of rusting metal and fleshy weeds to help the woman up. As I saw her
face I realized I’d seen her before Last night she came to the door of Ang’s place in the Quarter, while we were going over supply
lists. Ang had sent her away angrily, and without
bothering to explain anything to us.
    “I’m all
right ... thank you,” she said, obviously shaken. She wasn’t what I expected at
all—a small, neat woman in the usual loose white Company coveralls. Her face
was bare, and her dark, graying hair was cut short. She was not young, though
she was probably younger than she looked. There was an atypical air of
gentility and dignity about her. I knew what she wasn’t, but I couldn’t guess
what she was. She met my stare with her own, and said, “You’re very kind.” The
words were like a judgment, or a benediction. “My name is Hahn— Tiras ranKells Hahn,” last name
first, after the local custom.
    “May I
speak with you?” She sounded as if she didn’t expect me to say yes.
    But I said,
“Call me Gedda ,” and I offered her my arm. She seemed
grateful for the support as I led her back to the rover’s shade. She sipped
cold water from my canteen, buying time until she was ready to tell me what she
wanted. I listened to the sounds of the day—the thrumming of a million
heat-besotted tarkas , the jungle’s sentient whisper,
the clanking and grinding of the Company’s refinery hidden behind high gray
walls to our left. I uprooted a fat creeper that had spiralled up the rover’s side since yesterday—I’ve never known a place where flora grows
with such preternatural speed. I threw it away and wiped my hands on my
hopelessly stained pants. If I live to see the Millennium, I may never be clean
of the feel of this place.
    “It’s
frightening, isn’t it?” she said.
    “What?” I
asked.
    “How
precariously we float on the surface of life.”
    I grunted,
looking at the jungle. “A functional repeller grid
would solve that problem. What did you want of Ang ?”
    “His help. Someone’s help ....” She rubbed her face. “My daughter Song ... is missing. My only child.”
    “Have you
reported— ”
    “You don’t
understand!” She shook her head. “She’s gone to
Fire
Lake
.”
    I laughed.
Then I said, “Forgive me,” at the sight of her face. “You couldn’t know. You
just struck a nerve: I’ve come here to find my brothers. It’s