He ordered Spadrin to stop.
So Spadrin found another power supply--the unit
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that kept the perishable food in stass--and he burned it out. But he didn't tell anyone. He didn't even know what he'd done, the cretin.
No one did, until we ate breakfast--and spent the rest of the day doubled up with cramps and nausea. Food poisoning; we were lucky it didn't kill us. When I could think again about anything besides the pain in my gut, I checked the food locker's field generator, and found the short. I told the others. Even Ang couldn't ignore the look on Spadrin's face as he realized what he'd done-- not just to us, this time, but to himself.
"How long?" Ang asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Spadrin said. He wiped his mouth, wiped perspiration off of his face.
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"You used that damn joybox again! How long ago?"
Ang dragged Spadrin up from his bunk with a sudden violence that startled me.
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WORLD S END
"Th-three days," Spadrin gasped. "Just three days--"
Ang shoved him down onto the bunk again. "Then it's all ruined! You ruined our food. Why the hell didn't you say something three days ago?"
"I didn't know," Spadrin said sullenly. "How the fuck would I know?"
"You knew you'd blown something, you stupid bastard.
Why didn't you tell Gedda?"
Spadrin glared at me. "He's supposed to take care of that shit himself. It's his fault."
"I can't fix something if I don't know it's out!" I pressed my hands against my stomach and sat down.
"He's right," Ang said, meaning me, for once. "It's your goddamn fault, Spadrin. If we don't have enough supplies to get us to my strike--"
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I looked up at him, and in that moment I realized that he would kill Spadrin, kill us both, if he thought we stood in the way of his obsession. "Listen, Ang," I said, trying to sound calm, "we still have plenty of freeze dried left. We have enough water. If we ration it out we shouldn't have a real problem. You said we were getting close--"
He met my eyes, but he wasn't seeing me. "You can't count on it, out here. You can't count on anything.
..." He picked up the plate of food that he'd dropped when the sickness hit him. He balanced it on his palms like an offering.
"Well, that's life," I said softly, wondering how I would ever reach Fire Lake now. My hands clenched.
"I'll find a way--" I whispered, not meaning to say it aloud.
Ang stared at me, and sanity crept slowly back into his expression. "You're right." He nodded; his mouth twisted into a grimace of irony. "We'll get there. We'll do it on half rations, we'll do it Page 86
on nothing, on our hands and knees, if we have to." He looked at me again, and
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io7
JOAN D. VINGE
at Spadrin hunched miserably on the bunk. Deliberately he wiped the food off the plate onto the floor in front of
Spadrin's feet, and then he twisted the thin metal plate between his heavy hands, crushing it, still looking at us.
He turned and went forward into the cab, as if we were no longer there.
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1w
Ie're still alive; still searching, still following the dead river upstream. We've been in these clown-striped badlands for days.
Today we finally met another pilgrim, here in this twisting maze of canyons. He was leading a huge whillp, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter,
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one of those rubbery, glistening things from Big Blue that secrete acid to suck nourishment out of the rock, and never eat or drink. It was loaded down with sacks and containers, and it oozed along the canyon at barely walking speed.
I couldn't imagine how long the man must have been out here, moving at the whillp's pace. I decided it was too long, because when he saw us he wasn't afraid. He stood in the middle of the dry wash, waving his arms, shouting and grinning through his pale beard as if we were the best thing he'd ever seen.
Ang stopped the rover and we got out. Even the sight of three sweating, filthy, armed men didn't wipe the smile off of his face. Spadrin stood on one side of me; his eyes were narrow and cold. Ang stood on the other; his face was grim with a kind of tension that I'd never seen on it before. I felt my hands clutching my gun too hard--more because of their expressions than the stranger's.
"Halloo, halloo," the stranger shouted, coming toward us with outstretched, empty hands. He started to speak in a foreign language--after a minute I recog
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JOAN D. VINGE
nized it as Kesraal. That meant he was from Big Blue, like the beast. He stopped in front of us, just short of trying to embrace somebody. He looked at our guns and his face fell, as if we'd insulted him instead of threatened him. He jabbered earnestly, raising grizzled eyebrows.
"What's he want?" Ang muttered, rhetorically. He scratched himself.
"He asked if he's offended us somehow," I said. "His name is Harkonni, and he's from Big Blue.
He's very glad to see us--we're the first people he's seen in almost a year."
Ang looked at me, surprised.
I shrugged. "I speak a few languages." I felt something
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stir in me that I'd almost forgotten the name of.
Spadrin snorted, and gestured with his rifle. "Then tell him to get out of our track, or we'll be the last people he ever sees."
I saw the stranger start and frown at Spadrin. "I don't think he needs it translated. You understand what we say?" I asked Harkonni in Kesraal.
He nodded, still with the hurt look on his face. "Yes, yes." He answered in the language we were all using, this time. "I understand you. Forgive me, I forgot. I have not had the tongue of this world in my mouth for a long time."
Spadrin laughed out loud at the incongruous image, and even Ang's mouth inched upward.
Harkonni grinned, obviously missing the fact that they were laughing at him. His pale eyes were too bright, the eyes of a man with a fever. They were startlingly blue against his sunburned face. I shifted from foot to foot uneasily.
"Yes, yes," he went on. "It is wonderful to hold conversation
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with you today. Wonderful to see you all.
no
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Are you prospectors like myself?" There was only one other thing we could be, but that didn't seem to worry him.
Ang nodded. He lowered his gun. Spadrin didn't.
"I would like to share some food and talk with you," Harkonni said, with a kind of pathetic eagerness.
"Food? You have a lot of food?" Spadrin asked.
Ang looked uncertain, but he nodded. "I guess we can spare an hour."
"This is wonderful!" Harkonni beamed. "I have so much to tell! I haven't seen anyone in a year!