World's End

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When I am full, I go out again into the windswept square. It is swarming with figures, hundreds, thousands.

Some of them wear stinking rags, some of them shine like silver. Some of them stare at me.

Some of them walk right through each other. I stumble and fall, cursing with fear, the first time one walks through me. But then

I realize that they must be ghosts, haunting this dead city, haunting me. ... As I watch I begin to see that the ghosts wear auras of shadowy red and blue so that I can recognize them. Their voices travel through me with their restless spirits, some speaking in strange tongues, and some in languages that I know. The voices in my head are ghost voices. No one else hears ghosts, or sees them... except Song. Song is crazy too. I am comforted a little.

I have found a clue. I realize that I am searching for something. I remember: lam a police inspector. I search for clues. And for a moment some insane part of me takes such pleasure in the bright coherence of the memory that I

gasp with ecstasy. I stand rigid until the feeling fades.

A group of laughing men with cruel empty faces

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WORLD S END

comes toward me. They circle me, gesturing, pawing me, mouthing obscenities. One of them jerks my blanket off.

The trefoil catches the sunlight, flashing against my chest. They drop the blanket and hurry away.

I wrap it around me again.

I wander on, past a man having a fit. He thrashes on the ground, bleeding, begging some god or other to help him. I shudder and pull the blanket over my head. I begin to run again, like the beasts of World's End that run mindlessly over cliffs.

But when I reach the brink where a canyon lies like a rip in the reality of the plateau, I stop. Red dust and pebbles swirl around my feet. Far down below me I see something silver winking in the sun. The sudden sight of it excites my helpless mind like the sight of a beautiful woman. I have no idea why. Desolation settles over me again.

The rim of the canyon is sheer. The drop is almost

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straight down for the first fifty meters or so. I know I am insane; I am not fit to live. I know I don't want to live like this. ... I shuffle closer to the edge. Somewhere in my head someone is trying frantically to make me afraid.

I stand at the brink, looking down, swaying.