Empire of Two Worlds

One

The sun was not bright for us that day we fled from Klittmann City, riding at seventy miles per hour across the grey stone plain.

Behind us Klittmann filled the landscape, a stupendous grey castle quarried and raised out of the cold rock terrain.

I had been out in the open only once before, so the scene was a great novelty to me and despite the weirdness of our situation I took time to examine it from this new, unnatural angle.

Seen from the outside Klittmann scarcely had the appearance of an artificial construct at all. It was a vast pile, a rough-hewn mountain. A titanic mass of rock that had risen from the ground in some natural catastrophe, breaking out in slabs, blocks, gullies and canyons, ramp-like slides and roofs. It was all roughened and lumpy, and excess building materials spilled down the sides in frozen avalanches.

Which was as it would be. To the inhabitants of Klittmann the external wall was incidental, unconscious. No windows or doors except the one ground-level portal which was almost never opened. The city was completely internalised. When there was any rebuilding or extension the work was done from the inside; nobody ever visualised the exterior.

Unpretty though it was, for us the view had a not small degree of poignancy. We had no doubt that it was our last look at home. At that, we nearly didn’t make it. I was keeping my eye on the upright ring of the portal at the foot of the steel and concrete pile. A police sloop shot out bullet-like and came chasing after us.

“There’s one of them on our tail!” I said to Becmath.

Becmath was in the driving seat. He glanced in a mirror, grunting.

“I thought they would. Cops got no sense. Hold on, we’ll take him.”

He decelerated fiercely to about forty. Soon the cop-ship was pacing us, racing parallel at a respectful distance over the grey rock surface. I saw more sloops emerging from the portal.

Becmath grunted again. “He thinks he can play with us. Chase a mobster out of the city. Feel brave in the open. O.K., let’s go.” He hurled the sloop round in a screaming curve that took us on a convergent course with the cop vehicle.

We had built the sloop originally to operate in the lowest Klittmann streets where the cops do not usually dare to enter. But we had built it with that eventuality in mind and consequently we were bigger, with more fire-power. The sloop was thirty-five feet in length and twelve feet in the beam, and it was armed with Jain repeaters and Hacker cannon. Becmath was laughing now. Before the cop ship could change course we were sending Hacker shells whining away to smash through the other’s armour. Bullets rattled against our plating. Then the cop-ship swerved crazily from side to side and finally rolled over, a mass of junk.

Bec drove in a wide arc, keeping the range steady. A couple of cops were crawling out of the wreck, torn and bleeding. Our Jains rattled out a hail of lead. The cops twitched and jerked, then lay still.

“What about those other klugs?” Bec asked.

Reeth and I were already peering back towards Klittmann. The other sloops had started forward, but the fate of their brothers seemed to make them more cautious. They stopped, then reversed back towards the portal,

“They’re staying put,” I said.

“I thought so. Well, let’s get out of here.”

So he charged up the engines and we lit out towards the horizon. Gradually, ever so slowly. Klittmann began to sink in the distance behind us and we were alone in the wilderness. But it was a long time before it disappeared altogether.

The action had kept our minds off the horror of the situation. Now a silence descended on the sloop, broken only by the whine of the engines and the creak of the bodywork. The big balloon tyres rolled soundlessly over the dead rock. We all looked bleakly, frightened, at the deadness that surrounded us on all sides.

So we were thrown out of Klittmann City State for trying to be too big. But where to now? I had a sick feeling in my stomach, like you get when an elevator drops from the top to the bottom in ten seconds flat. Somebody switched on the lights inside the sloop, which only made the scene outside even more dismal.

Grey. Grey, flat landscape. Grey sky. Grey light. Even the air is grey on Killibol. Grey and dead. Nothing grows. Nothing moves. The only life is human life, the only food that which is grown in the tanks of human cities or in the vans of a handful of nomad tribes. How, in this world without charity, could we eat?

When we were well out of sight of the exit portal we stopped for repairs. The sloop had taken a beating in the battle in the city, but had stood up well. We also got rid of the bodies of Brogatham and Fleg, who had been laid out at the back of the main cabin but were bleeding all over the place.

“Bec,” I said, “we lost two. That gives us food for about two and a half months, if we half starve ourselves.”

There were seven of us left: Becmath, me, Grale, Reeth and Hassmann, and the two passengers — Tone the Taker, who like a fool had jumped aboard at the last moment, and Harmen, the alk, whom Becmath had put in the storage hold for reasons of his own.

“I’m thinking about it, Klein,” Bec said tonelessly, “I’m thinking pretty hard.”

I had to feel sorry for Bec. For him it must have been bitter, desperate, to see the shattering of all his dreams and ambitions. But hell, we were all desperate too.

“But, Bec,” I urged in a low voice, “what’re we gonna do? We can’t get back inside Klittmann. We can’t get in anywhere.”

While the repairs were in progress the boys seemed to develop a slightly hysterical hilarity. There’s always a kind of mobster comradeship after a close shave; now, though, I think the hopelessness of our position had brought it on. They wanted to show each other they weren’t afraid.

Grale opened some cans to celebrate our successful retreat into the wilderness. Becmath was silent throughout it all. As soon as the repairs were completed he set the sloop in motion again, even though the sun was now lower in the sky and it was getting darker. I thought ruefully of the comforts I was used to back in Klittmann.

I dropped into the seat next to Bec’s. “We’ve got to decide soon, while our supplies last. Maybe we could make it to some other city and take a chance on getting in there.”

“And what chance would we have in another city — or of getting in, for that matter?” Bec replied wryly. “Cease worrying, we’ll make it. We got us a practitioner of the Hermetic Art.”

I was bewildered. “What, that old fool in the back? Why did we bring him, Bec? We can’t afford to feed him, we ought to throw him off.”

“If anybody’s thrown off, I’ll tell you who.”

“But, Bec,” I said, staring at the endless, bare landscape into which we were plunging like a bullet, “where are we gonna go?”

Bec glanced at me with his hard black eyes.

“Earth.”

Earth? I shook my head, not understanding. If Bec doesn’t want to tell you, he won’t. But I knew we couldn’t get to Earth. There wasn’t any way of getting off Killibol.