World’s End Read Free Page A

your own way! I don’t want to know about it.”
    HK drew
himself up like a beached clabbah , straining for
dignity. “I should have known better than to appeal to your honor.” Failing at dignity, and at irony.
    SB caught
HK’s arm and pulled him toward the open door, glancing back once, to spit at
me, “ Gedda .”
And after that I didn’t hear from them again. I told myself good riddance.
    But instead
of forgetting about them, I’ve followed them into World’s End. I can’t believe
I’ve done this ... the thought of just spending a night in this squalid town is
enough to make any reasonable person take the next shuttle back to
civilization. And it’s not as if they went off for a holiday week and forgot
the time. They disappeared, into an uncharted wilderness! They were totally
unprepared for what they did—neither one of them ever attempted anything more
dangerous before this than spending all day in the baths. If the wasteland
didn’t kill them, the human animals who inhabit it
probably did, and picked their bones for good measure. Am I really going out
there to let the same thing happen to me—?
    When I was
a boy, my nurse told me stories of the Child Stealer, who stole highborn babies
and replaced them with cretinous Unclassifieds .
For years I was sure that it must have happened to HK and SB
.... They chose their fate, and if World’s End swallowed them without a
trace, they got what they deserved. They left no one and nothing behind, except
me ... left me with nothing but memories.
    But since
they’re gone I’m head of family now ... a title as hollow as it is unexpected.
And they are still my brothers. That makes it my duty to search for them; my responsibility to all our ancestors—who will be my ancestors
forever, whatever strangers violate my family’s honor and claim my blood as
their own. But still, if it weren’t for Father, for what I owe to him ...
    If it
weren’t for me, none of this would have happened.
    But even if
I’m a failure, I’m not a fool. I have training that HK and SB never had, I have the experience to help me search for them. This
isn’t impossible ....
    Besides, if
I left here now, what would I go back to? My job? I
can’t even do that competently anymore. They don’t want to see my face back in Foursgate until I can perform my duties again. Ever since
my brothers came to this world, I’ve felt as if I’ve lost all control of my
life.
    I’ve got to
give myself enough time for this search—time to find out what it is I’ve lost,
and how to get it back ... to find out whether it even matters.

day 7.
    Gods, can
it be a week already since I came here? It seems like forever—and yet it seems
like only yesterday that I made my first trip to the Office of Permits.
    I was
informed by the slovenly woman who rented me my vermin-infested room that I
would need clearances. Even to stay here in town longer than overnight I would
have to have a Company permit—and to enter World’s End, I’d need to get half a
dozen more. When I heard the news I was elated, because I realized that my brothers
would have had to do the same thing, and that there would at least be some
record of how and when they left here. I actually thought that this was going
to be easy.
    In the
morning I went into the center of town. But the moment I crossed the threshold
of the Permit Office on the town square, I realized that my preconceptions
about anything being reasonable or easy here were fantasies. There was no door
on the office; the heat was worse inside than outside, though I wouldn’t have
believed that was possible. There were no chairs, no counters, nothing but a
clear wall dividing the single room in two.
    Beyond the
wall I saw three people standing or sitting in the real office, which looked
primitive but functional. I crossed the room to the wall and rapped on it. Only
one of the clerks even bothered to glance up at me; none of them came to the
wall. I rapped on the wall again, harder,