Empire of Two Worlds

Four

Outside the light is always a little dimmer than we keep it in Klittmann, but our eyes quickly grew accustomed to it. On that first day, however, we kept the sloop’s lights burning. The sun was sinking in the sky.

Day and night on Killibol go through a cycle of fifteen hours. When darkness fell Becmath kept on driving, seeing his way by means of headlights. Me, I settled down to sleep. When I woke the sun was up again and Bec was still driving. The alk was in the seat next to him, a map spread out on the dashboard. He was consulting a funny little instrument with a wavering needle.

Reeth handed me a slab of protein. I bit into it and enjoyed the fruity flavour. But it was soon gone and not much of a breakfast. While I ate I weighed up the bunch I was stuck with for good or ill.

Excluding Harmen and Tone the Taker, the four of us were part of the inner circle Becmath kept around him. There was Grale: flashy and boorish. He had a knack of being the first to move and of winding up with the biggest piece. I had a bad relationship with him. Then there was Hassmann, a big, bull-like type, not too bright but dependable if there wasn’t much thinking to be done. He was the kind who never questioned an order but got on with the job.

Brightest of the three was Reeth. I got along with him best. He was what I call a reasonable guy.

They were all slum-bred, hard, and they could be cruel. But they were capable, and if a thing could be done they could do it. All the more so because they were schooled in Becmath’s special kind of leadership and organisation. In a word, they were smart and knew a lot. In any tight spot they were the people I would choose to have with me. If there was any crack in this ruthless world where we could crawl, they were the guys to take advantage of it. The trouble was I didn’t believe there was a crack.

Coming to Bec, he was smarter than them all, smarter than anybody. Among normal men Bec was sharp like a knife. I don’t think any of us even felt resentful about his dragging us with him in his downfall. Big men make big mistakes.

I swallowed the last of the protein. “O.K.,” I heard Bec say to the alk, “we’ll keep going till we hit the river.”

At that moment he apparently saw something through the window because he swerved sharply and slowed down to a crawl.

My pulse quickened when I took a look. There was a girl out there, walking along alone. When she saw us she ran. Bec drew alongside her and we shouted out to her, calling her names. I could hear her panting as she tried to get away.

“It’s a nomad girl!” Bec said in excitement.

“Hey, pretty thing, you,” Grale called, pulling down a window. “Come on, don’t be coy.”

“Fetch her in, boys.” Bec pulled up to a stop.

A couple of the boys jumped out and grabbed her. They dragged her into the sloop and held her against the side panelling.

She glared at us hotly, defiantly. She wasn’t wearing much, just a tattered gown that left one leg and one breast bare. When she moved it showed even more. Nomad girls have no sense of modesty, so I’d heard.

“Hey, she’s good looking,” Bec gloated. “Now listen, girl, with you out here on your own, and on foot too, your people can’t be far away. Probably on the other side of that hill, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Let me take her in the back,” I urged, “I’ll screw it out of her.”

Bec chuckled, half frowning. “That wouldn’t scare a nomad girl. First things first, Klein, plenty of time for that later.”

Suddenly she spoke. “Yeah, over the hill. Just right over.”

“You’d better be telling me the truth, now.” Bec wiped his mouth, looking speculatively at the low ground on the mid-horizon. “Listen, honey, we’re going over the hill, and you’ll show me which are the protein vans. Get it? You won’t get hurt. If we grab one,” he explained unnecessarily, “we can eat for good.”

Motors whining, we crept up the hill, pausing on the crest. The girl pointed and giggled. “There!”

The nomad camp was down below sure enough. But we didn’t linger for long. There was too much of it. Great vans and prime movers scattered about in the dust. And they spotted us almost as soon as we emerged over the rise. There was a puff as a mortar shell came whizzing our way.

Bec heaved on the wheel and we roared frantically down towards the plain. I shook the girl by the shoulders. “Pretty girl, you’re taking a big risk by trying that on!”

“Well, boys,” Becmath said sombrely, “that’s what we can expect from nomad tribes, anybody big enough to have protein tanks. Banditry no good for us. O.K., we continue. We still got Plan A.”

This was the first I’d heard of Plan A, but at that moment I had other things stirring me besides the threat of starvation. I dragged the nomad girl to the back of the driving cabin.

“What’s your name, warm-belly?” I said, feeling her arms.

“Gelbore.”

“Well, Gelbore, you’ll never see your people again.”

She was scared and lost, but trying to put a good face on it.

“So who worries?” she said brashly. She leaned against me, pressing into me gently.

“Maybe we’ll starve. If so, you’ll starve.” Now I was fondling her uncovered breast. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the situation, but it made me feel dizzy, more dizzy than any woman ever had before.

Becmath spoke to me over his shoulder. “Don’t get ideas, Klein. That woman cuts down our rations.”

We were a good way from the nomad camp by now. Gelbore stared woefully out of the window, at the grey terrain and the receding hills.

“They’re shifting out soon! If you drop me off I’ll not walk back in time!”

“You’re asking for favours. We haven’t even got time to stop when we throw you off.”

If you hit the ground at seventy miles per hour, I reckon your chances are something less than hopeful. Gelbore went limp in my arms when she heard this death sentence. Her head drooped.

“Hell, what difference does it make?” I objected. “If we die, we die, having her along won’t change anything. Pity to waste her now we got her.”

He was silent for some moments. Then he sighed, and shrugged. “You win. Stop worrying, little girl. For the time being anyway.”

I took her back, past the motor housings, the magazine lockers, into the store hold. “It was me who fixed things for you,” I murmured. She muttered words I didn’t hear.

I stripped her robe off and it was really good, my hips grinding against hers. When it was over I found myself gazing at her face. For the first time I saw Gelbore as a person.

Becmath never seemed to need sleep. He insisted on driving the sloop himself most of the time, day and night. He would hand the wheel to myself, Reeth or Grale for a while, but four or five hours later he would be back and carry on sometimes for a twenty-hour stretch.

I was wondering what Tone would do when he ran out of pop. He had a store of it in the box he never let out of his sight, but it couldn’t last for ever. Every so often he’d disappear into the back to give himself a shot. We never mentioned it, except Grale who used to taunt him sometimes.

It wasn’t long before we all lost patience with Bec’s silence. We wanted answers. Maybe we’d kept silence this far because of a hidden fear that there weren’t any answers, that Bec had no ideas.

But life in the sloop was monotonous and we were starting to quarrel. More and more often Bec had to intervene to quieten us down. Eventually Reeth retorted: “Listen, boss, we want to know where we’re going.”

“Feeling hungry, huh?” A hint of amusement came to Bec’s face.

“You bet we’re hungry,” Hassmann complained. “What we’re eating wouldn’t keep a dog alive.”

Bec nodded distantly, as if his thoughts were far away. “So you want food. O.K., then listen to this. There’s a place where food grows on the ground from horizon to horizon. When you walk you’re treading it underfoot, you can’t see the floor for everything that’s growing there. Food just for the picking up. The name of that place is Earth.”

Grale gave him a pained look. “Earth? Don’t kid us on, boss, we’re not stupid.”

“I’ll reserve an opinion on that. Get used to the idea, because Earth is where we’re going.”

“But that’s impossible.” This time it was Tone who spoke.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bec answered. “Centuries ago the gateway from Earth was destroyed, blown up, its substance dispersed. The connection with Earth went with it and nobody has passed either way since. But there’s something you don’t know. Back in Klittmann I spent a lot of time talking to the alchemist. I’d call him the wisest man in Klittmann. He’s studied all the old books and everything and he told me something about the gateway nobody else realises.”

Harmen took all this praise impassively. The old coot, I thought, he’s behind all this. He’s captivated Bec with his weird theories.

“You may or may not know,” Bec continued, “that the gate consisted of substance that existed both here on Killibol and simultaneously on Earth. What I for one didn’t know was that the gateway was opened in the first place by an alchemist. That right, Harmen? Go on, tell them.”

The alk nodded soberly. “True it is, as can be read in the ancient documents by one able enough to read the arcane symbols. The substance of the gateway was derived from tincture, the prima materia of existence which is not governed by the laws of space and time. Else how was the gateway possible — how could exoteric science have created something that existed in two locations at the same time? Tincture is indestructible, indivisible, and hence—” He broke off. “Let your leader tell you.”

“It’s certainly not in any of the workmen’s manuals,” Reeth admitted, rubbing his chin. “To tell the truth I’ve never given a thought in my life to how the gateway worked. That was all in the past, long before I was born.”

“What Harmen means is,” Bec resumed, “that though the stuff the gateway was made of was scattered over hundreds of thousands of miles by an atomic explosion, it never really lost its cohesion. Over the centuries it sort of gathered itself up again, attracted to itself, as it were. And what’s more, in the same place it was before. Harmen calculates that by now the gateway is reconstituted again.”

Reeth was frowning. “You mean the molecules have all gravitated back to where they were before the explosion?”

“That’s right,” Bec began, but the alk corrected him. “Tincture has no molecules. Atomic and molecular matter are corruptions of the primordial hyle, which is single, whole and indivisible, yet not in a way that we can readily understand. To the gross senses it may seem possible for it to be divided in certain conditions. Then again, very great force can cause it to become attenuated to the point where it apparently vanishes; yet given time it reverts to the form given to it when it was first distilled. Hylic objects cannot be made to change their shape except by very difficult alchemical processes.”

“And this is what will have happened to the gateway?” I queried.

“The gateway is not pure hyle, it is true; but the derivation is close enough for the same to hold.”

“Well, there you have it, boys,” Bec finished. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand all those technicalities. The important thing is that we know where the gateway is. And we should be able to reach it before our food runs out.”

Grale had been cleaning his gun. He threw it down in an expression of disgust, a rare show of rebellion for him. “The whole thing is cockeyed crazy! You know what I think, boss? We’re being taken by an alk loon!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Reeth said in calmer, meditative tones. “It sounds reasonable. I mean, it hangs together. But if you ask me it’s an awful long shot.”

“Sure, it’s a long shot,” Bec replied amiably. “It’s a gamble. Maybe we’ll never reach the gateway. Or maybe Harmen here is wrong about it. We’ll soon know.”

Grale was angry. “We should have stayed in Klittmann!“

“In Klittmann you’d be dead already. You think we had any choice about getting out? Wise up — we’re all that’s left of the organisation. In Klittmann we were the core, the main office, and the cops wouldn’t have let up until they got us. I don’t like this situation any more than you do.”

Tone sniffed. His face had that sneaky, twitchy look that meant his system was crying out for a recharge. I knew what he was thinking. Whether there was any pop on Earth. Maybe he hoped that grew out of the ground there, too.

Bec resumed driving. I slid into the adjoining seat.

“What’s it going to be like on Earth, boss?”

“There’s no knowing. It seems Earth and Killibol exist at different… time-rates from one another.” Plainly he had difficulty with the concept. “Sometimes one speeds up relative to the other, sometimes slows down. While centuries have passed here on Killibol something like a million years or more have gone by on Earth. It’s anybody’s guess what we’ll find.”

I let that sink in for a minute. “So it’s a one-way trip. There’s no coming back because….”

Bec glanced at me fiercely. “Klein, we’re coming back! Don’t ever doubt that!” Suddenly he chuckled. “Confusing, isn’t it? Think about it. If we spent a year on Earth and came back here, we’d find that only seconds had passed on Killibol. Actually it isn’t even that complicated. Harmen says the two planets are currently synchronised in their time-rates. He says they’re both at the apogee of their cycles. So if everything goes right — and I only give us fifty-fifty — we’ll be able to pass to and fro at will between Earth and the Dark World.”

“The Dark World?”

“Sure. That’s what the old books call Killibol.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Of course, it’s never very bright out in the open here. Not as bright as in the cities.”

“It’s not what you’d call dark, either.”

“That’s right.” He was silent for a moment. Then he lifted his eyes upwards. There were stars in the sky. I’d watched them often in the last few days.

“You know something, Klein? Earth is in another galaxy. Billions of light-years away. Just think of it! It’s an awful long way away.”

A day later Bec brought the sloop to a halt for a few minutes. The engines ticked over in the midst of the same sombre, grey plains. In the middle distance stood a city.

“According to the map that’s Chombrel,” Bec said. “It’s a dead city now. Their tanks caught a plague.”

He circled it slowly, studying it. Something about it seemed to interest him. And in fact it didn’t look like Klittmann. It was more sculptured. Its walls rose straighter, but then broke off jaggedly.

“Chombrel was architecturally fashioned to represent a dead tree stump,” Bec said finally. “See the way it juts up on one side, as if the trunk had broken off?”

I’d seen a picture of a tree once, but the whole thing meant little to me. Bec put the sloop on course again. “It’s a queer, involved kind of symbolism on a dead world….”

What else he might have said I don’t know, because just then I noticed something I didn’t like. Grale had Gelbore up against the rear wall of the cabin. By now she thought of herself as my girl, and so did I. She was too scared to resist, but she glanced at me, perplexed and distressed.

I shot across the cabin and jerked him away. Coolly he checked me, holding up his hand threateningly, dangerously.

“Hold it, man. A woman is everybody’s property.”

Bec looked at us, then turned back to the wheel. “What’s the matter with you, Klein? This isn’t too considerate.”

Hotly Gelbore and I exchanged feelings through the eyes. “The girl is mine!” I snarled. “Any klug who wants her passes me first.”

Becmath still did not deign to present more than his back to the argument, but he said sternly: “Now listen, you klugs. Any trouble over our little nomad girl and I myself will throw her off the sloop. So calm it.”

Grale had a slack-mouth grin. “And who gets the girl?”

“Klein is over you. Do what he says.”

It didn’t make me feel good that Bec had to reassert my authority over the others like that; but at least I had Gelbore. Grale gave me a dirty look and then joined Reeth, Hassmann and Tone in a game of cards. Gelbore huddled with me in a corner, regarding them with fear.

“Don’t worry,” I murmured. “They had it hard enough in Klittmann not to hold any resentment. You just stick with me.”

“Sure, I’ll stick with you,” she murmured back, giving a little shiver.

I left her and dropped back into the seat next to Bec. “Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t thank me,” he replied harshly. His voice was hard and brutal, harder than I had ever heard it before.

Eventually we came to a broad river of clear water, which according to Harmen’s map we had to cross. Floating down the river were big slabs of the lighter-than-water rock that is found in some parts. When the stream proved too deep for the sloop to ford, Reeth proposed that we lash it to one of these slabs.

The job took some time, but everyone brought up in Klittmann is something of a mechanic — as well as an electrician and builder. We managed to grapple one of the bigger slabs and hauled it to the shore using the sloop’s engine. The hardest part was lashing the sloop down safely. Then we cast off and went flowing downstream.

There was a landmark we had to watch for, so Bec figured we might as well stay on the water until we found it. The rock slab was bigger in area than the sloop, and we took to sitting out on it, detailing a couple of men at a time to steer us with poles.

I found myself sitting with Bec, alone and out of earshot of the others. Bec was eager to talk about those things difficult to understand that were so typical of him of late. When he looked at the others his expression was sardonic and he gave a half-grunt, half-chuckle.

“Gangsters,” he said. “That’s what we are, gangsters. Remember what the alchemist said? Gangsters loomed large among the people who came to Killibol. Maybe the corruption and stagnation began with that. But you know something, Klein? We are gangsters, and we are sharper than anybody in Klittmann.”

“That may be so,” I replied, “but here we are outside.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You know why? Only we represent change in Klittmann. We are dangerous. Have to be eliminated. Listen to me, Klein: we could be the germ of something different on this world. Yes, gangsters and all. Who else is there? In Klittmann now there is only self-interest. We could go beyond that — make a state that existed for itself and commanded the allegiance of all men. A state that conquered other cities and made an empire that released inventiveness in men and changed the whole world.”

I guess Bec had been working on me for a long time. Ever since I had met him, if the truth were known, I had been coming under the spell of his personality and of his ideas. Some of them I didn’t understand, but he had aroused a kind of loyalty in me that was like something magical. Certainly it went far beyond my upbringing.

“That state, that empire,” he told me, “is the hope of mankind. Something not for a man’s own sake, but for the sake of the thing itself. You with me Klein?”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, swallowing.

“The others are good guys — capable. But that’s all. Reeth maybe… but Grale and Hassmann? Not on your life. They’re mindless klugs. Tools. You have a mind, Klein. Maybe it’s pretty hard to find sometimes… but I’ve watched you. An idea gets through to you in the end.

“So my state, Klein, that comes before everything else. A city that progresses, right?”

I was carried away by what he was saying. It seemed to me that here was the first new, clean thing I had heard since I was born. A sense of loyalty that went beyond all personal considerations; here was what Bec was putting to me, and it sounded invincible. Maybe that’s ridiculous considering the situation we were in, but Bec had that quality: he could make even defeat seem fascinating and hopeful.

“Before everything, right?” Bec repeated. “Even before a woman.”

Gelbore was sitting on the edge of the raft, trailing her hand in the water. I looked at her and swallowed again. Much though I was inspired by Bec’s vision, there was one thing I had to admit.

“Sometimes nothing comes before a woman, Bec,” I said.

So what did Becmath do when he heard this?

He took out his handgun and before I fully realised what was happening he shot Gelbore. From former occasions I was familiar with the accuracy of Bec’s shooting. She took it in the head. Without a single cry she toppled into the water and disappeared from view.

When I saw her falling off the raft like a lump of clay my guts knotted into a tight ball. At the same time something indescribably sweet and painful passed through me. I sprang to my feet, on fire.

“You klug! I’ll kill you for that!”

“The state first, Klein.” Bec’s voice was incongruously gentle.

A man has to be logical. “O.K.,” I pledged with difficulty. “The state first.”

From that moment Bec had me hooked in a condition of unshakable loyalty. It was the first time in my life I had known real dedication. I think I had to have that, or I would never have been able to face the fact that I did nothing to avenge the killing of Gelbore.

And yet the whole thing was insane. Here we were, practically dead men, while Bec spouted dreams about state and empire. He talked to me more during the journey, expanding on his plans. He would establish regular traffic between the cities, he said, wipe out the nomad bands and set up staging posts so that travellers could replenish their supplies en route. It all sounded fine, the only missing part was how he was going to achieve all this.

But like I say, by now I was hooked on the dream and instead of greeting it with scepticism or derision I took it all with an air of hard-headed realism.

During the second day on the river we saw the landmark that would lead us to the gateway: a thousand-foot column of stainless steel. It was weathered and worn, corroded in places. Obviously it had been there a long time, but just as obviously it must have been erected after the nuclear explosion had destroyed the gateway. For some reason the people of that time had left it there as a marker.

Beyond the pillar a shallow valley ran between two long, rounded mounds for about two to three miles. After we grounded the sloop we followed it to where the mounds met. At the junction, or just before it, the ground was fissured into a gaping chasm that ran a fair distance. Situated neatly over that chasm was something that at first you weren’t sure was there.

It was like a big transparent, very clear jelly with a lavender tint. In shape it was an elongated ovoid, a big egg.

Bec looked at the alchemist.

Harmen nodded. “My calculations were correct. That’s it.”

We all got out to explore. When you touched the material of the gateway it was like putting your hand in very thin water. Thin oil, maybe. It didn’t impede motion but it felt cool and smooth.

The fissure was a couple of hundred feet deep. Its being there was probably accidental — accidental insofar as it was a by-product of the atomic explosion centuries ago — because the ground thereabouts was considerably broken up and smaller cracks rayed out at various angles.

We went back to the sloop to talk it over. “How do we know it still works?” Grale snapped tensely.

“Have you got any instrument that might test it?” Bec asked Harmen.

The alk shook his head. “Afraid not. The only way is to try it out. The gate is directional, by the way. You have to enter it from the right direction. Going through from this end of the egg, straight between the walls of the valley, will take you to Earth, You get nowhere by trying it from any other angle. Likewise you take the reverse procedure to get from Earth to Killibol.”

Hassmann sighed. “And if it don’t work you go to the bottom of the gulf. That’s pretty!”

“You’ve played crazier games, Hassmann.” Bec settled himself comfortably in the driver’s seat and started the motors.

“You’re not taking us through just like that!” Grale protested. He was sweating slightly. “We ought to send somebody through first! To see if it works! To see what’s on the other side—”

“And if it doesn’t work, Grale, what are you gonna do then? You want to sit here and starve?”

Bec twisted round to look Grale straight in the eyes as he said this. We were all silent.

Grale started to laugh.

Bec backed up the sloop to get a good run. Then we went at the gateway full tilt. The Big Egg loomed up, shimmering — suddenly Grale and Reeth let loose with Jain guns and gave out raucous whoops and laughs to give vent to their nervous energy—

There was an instant of utter darkness. Then we came out into the sunlight — and man! We all knew why they call Killibol the Dark World.

We had to wear eye-filters ever since. The sun seared my eyes like a white-hot iron. The landscape had a million colours which thrust themselves into my eyeballs like knives.

How bright it is! How bright is that place!