World’s End by Joan D. Vinge Page A

He began to pace tensely in the
small area between us. “I’ll tell you what we’re after. The last time I went
out with a Company team, I made a discovery.” He reached into a pocket and
brought something out in the palm of his hand.
    I looked at
it, seeing only a rather nondescript egg sized lump of stone. “What is it, some
sort of ore?”
    He smiled
at me with an insufferable air of superiority. “It’s a solii .”
    Spadrin slid down off the boulder. “Let me see that,” he said. He snatched it from Ang’s hand. “A solii ? This?” He held it up to the light, but it was still only a lump of stone. “It
looks like a piece of crap, to me.”
    “It’s
uncut, obviously.” Ang took it back, clenching his
hand.
    I
remembered the one or two genuine solus I’d seen in
my life ... they seem to be on fire with their own light. It’s said they were
named after the legendary star Sol, the sun that first shed light on humankind,
because of their transcendent beauty. There are even some cults that consider
them holy; one of the stones I saw was worn by a religious mystic. “And there
are more where you discovered this?” I asked.
    “Yes. There
are. There must be—” Ang’s glance shifted. “I found
it in a dry riverbed; all we have to do is track upstream until we locate the
right formation, and we’ll be rich ... all of us. There’ll be plenty for all of
us.” He looked at Spadrin as he repeated it.
    “Where is
it from here? How far? What are the co- ords ?” Spadrin asked.
    Ang just
looked at him.
    Spadrin spat an iesta pod. “Listen, dirteater ,
you called this a partnership. I want my share of everything, and that means
all you know. You can tell me now, or you can tell me the hard way.” He flexed
his hands.
    “ Ang ,” I muttered, “if you tell him that, you’ve got
nothing—”
    Ang only
shrugged, moving away from me. He said, to Spadrin , “ It’s a few days’ travel southeast from here to the place
where I found the solii . I don’t know how far we’ll
have to go from there to find the formation. Any co- ords I could give you would be meaningless, anyway. Normal readings are useless. I
navigate by landmark and experience .... Sometimes
even that doesn’t work. Things change out here, you understand? Every time I go
out, I see things twisted around. You’ve got to know World’s End, or you won’t
survive. I’m the only one who can find what we want. And I’m the only one who
can get us out again. Don’t ever forget it.” He searched our faces, to be sure
we believed him. Spadrin spat out another pod, but he
nodded.
    “Why are
you doing this?” I asked. “Why didn’t you follow up on this before, when you
first found the solii ?”
    He laughed
once; the sound was more like a curse. “Because if I’d
reported it, all the profits would belong to the Company. So I quit.
Even splitting what we find with them and you, I’ll be rich. This is my reward.
No one can take it away from me. No one.” The hand
that held the solii made a fist. He asked me, “Are
you finished yet?”
    I shook my
head. “Soon. But we’d better have easier terrain from
here on, or I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this wreck moving.”
    He glared
at me. “We’ll make it.” He turned away.
    “ Ang ?” I called, and he looked back. “How close will
we come to
Fire
Lake
?”
    He
shrugged. “Too close for comfort. The closer you get to
Fire
Lake
,
the crazier everything gets.”
    “How likely
are we to meet anyone else out here?”
    He shrugged
again. “You never know. And you don’t want to know the ones who are glad to see you .... Why?”
    “I just
wondered,” I answered lamely. To even try to explain my real reason for being
here at this point seemed absurd. Ang walked away
from the rover, away from us. I felt a kind of helpless fatalism settle over me
as I watched him go, looking out into the wasteland. World’s End was far vaster
and more desolate than I had ever imagined.