Empire of Two Worlds

Two

A Killibol city is a lot like one of those termite hills they have on Earth and Luna.

The inside is big enough to be a whole, totally enclosed world. It’s monotonous. On all sides there is grey: the cold grey of metal and the warmer grey of stone and concrete.

Our city, Klittmann, is a typical example. Some parts of it are bustling with life, in others there’s a deathly quiet. Wherever you go you’re surrounded by a maze of streets, ramps, alleys, rickety chasms, buttresses and girders. In the busier districts everything vibrates slightly and dust is always falling through the air.

Nuclear furnaces provide enough power; food comes from the protein tanks. Nobody ever managed to grow food in Killibol’s utterly dead, inert soil. By a long, difficult process it is possible to break down the Killibol rock and use a fraction of its material in the food-producing process, and that way they make up for loss and waste; but most of the material in the tanks is recycled by reclaiming sewage and garbage.

The tanks are the most important things on Killibol. Everybody’s life focuses around his connection with a Tank. By the letter of the law of practically any city a citizen’s right to food is inalienable; the most severe penalty is to be turned outside, into the open where you starve to death. But in practice it’s possible to lose your connection and have to try to make a living by scavenging, by performing irregular services, or by crime. The tanks are attached to all the organisations that exist inside the city. The police have their own tanks, the construction workers have their own tanks, and so do the manufacturers as well as the city government. So any of those people might become displeased with you and cut off your connection and there’s not much you can do about it because the law is rough and ready in Klittmann. Even if you work for the government, if they fire you they tear up your allotment card.

In Klittmann there are thousands of such people and most of them are to be found in the bowels of the city, in the seedy, dangerous quarter that bustles around the foundations. The cops never came in there much; although they would have liked to, the hard facts of life had created something of a boundary between the domain of the police and the domain of crime.

Well, that gives you a fragment of the picture. A Killibol city is isolated, absorbed in itself — there’s no ionosphere for long-range radio and the trading caravans that once in a while set out fall foul more often than not of nomad bands, so there’s not much scope for adventure or travel — but it needs to be said that the affairs of a place like Klittmann scarcely vary at all from generation to generation. There’s no progress, and no decline. The citizens carry out their work and life habits with a blind instinct, exactly like those termites I was talking about. And naturally, change is something the cops, the government, practically everybody, wants to see least of all.

But I guess nothing lasts forever. Even in the changeless conditions of those big termite hills a man like Becmath was bound to turn up eventually.

The constructional urge in Klittmann is to build up. The magnates and government bosses who build themselves lavish apartments or put city extension schemes into operation always place them on the outer, upper part of the pile. It’s an instinct with them. Sometimes their efforts go too far and the new excrescences collapse and go avalanching down the outer wall, taking hundreds of workmen with them. Efforts at rescue are brief and halfhearted; by reflex the people inside seal off the affected section, embarrassed at their mistake.

In general, though, the work of Klittmann engineers is sound. And as the pile masses itself further up, the buttresses and bastions down below become broader and more solid, to take the strain. Parts of the Basement — the vast sprawling district right down in the guts of the city — are little more than slums huddled beneath massive arches of steel and concrete.

Hidden under the curve of Tenth North Bastion is Mud Street. Its name is because the buildings are jerry-built from a hastily made concrete mix that looks like mud. Mud Street is what passes in Klittmann for an outlying shanty town — in fact it looks a little like some primitive villages I saw on Luna later. It’s dusty, the buildings are thrown together and badly shaped. The only difference is that the bastion, with the whole weight of Klittmann above it, leans over and seems to press down with a crushing presence. The light from the overhead arcs is a sickly yellow.

Just where the bastion comes to an end, and Mud Street opens into a mile-long metal carriageway that’s deserted now, there’s a place known locally as Klamer’s. You enter the door through a curtain and inside there are tables and wall machines for games like Ricochet and Spin-Ball. Sometimes you can get pop there, too, so the place tends to fill up with addicts.

At that time Klamer’s belonged to Darak Klamer, a smalltime operator who more or less controlled Mud Street. When I first met Becmath, which was in the games room on Mud Street, I worked for Klamer. You might say he owned me, too. Bec changed that.

The first I knew of the raid was when I heard shouts and screams mingled with gunfire from the main games room. I was in the back with another of Klamer’s boys when a third looking scared, scuttled in from the main room to join us.

I didn’t stop to ask questions. “Let’s get to the car,” I said. We left through the back door that opened on a side alley, at the end of which our vehicle was parked.

The raiders had already put a man in the alley to nab us if we came out, but I guess he didn’t expect us so soon. As it was I practically came out firing. The bullets from his gun showered powder from the soft stone of the wall near my head, while mine sent him sprawling right up against the back of the alley.

“Let’s push out of here fast,” Hersh said as we jumped in the vehicle. I remember he was a spry little guy who never liked to take chances he couldn’t calculate.

“No,” I said.

As we came out of the alley, I saw that two bigger cars were parked on the other side of Mud Street, looking like humpbacked beetles against the massive rise of the bastion. The cars were occupied; not all the newcomers were inside the gaming rooms.

I swung round and crashed the car into the entrance, blocking it. Then I flung open the nearside door and we piled out, back into the gaming room.

There were four gunmen in there. Apparently they thought they already had the place secure. Our customers — those who were still alive — were streaming out the back way. Good, I thought, now the back way’s blocked too.

I only had a handgun, firing heavy, solid slugs. Hersh had a repeater he’d grabbed just before we left — as a matter of fact it was the only repeater in Klamer’s gang. He sprayed the club with it, shooting down raiders and clients indiscriminately.

The gunplay only lasted seconds, but it made the kind of racket that seems to last an eternity and makes everything confused. Finally I realised the only gun firing was my own. The four outsiders were dead. So was Hersh and the other guy — I forget his name now. The club was empty.

I took a quick look through the front entrance, peering through the car’s windows to the outside. The two strangers were still in position. Our vehicle was jammed solidly in the doorway and I didn’t think they’d move it in a hurry. So I upended a table and took up a position covering the way in from the back.

Just about now it began to occur to me that perhaps after all I hadn’t been so smart. I was cornered and my only hope was that Klamer would turn up with reinforcements, which knowing Klamer I wasn’t too sure of. I wondered who the raiders were. Maybe they had it in for Klamer.

Something moved the curtain at the back of the room. I fired. A body slumped down, bulging the curtain awkwardly.

Silence. A long wait that strained my nerves. I glanced behind me, at the car stuffed through the doorway. But I felt fairly safe from that quarter. I was out of the line of fire from the door and to come through they would have to clamber with difficulty through the car from door to door.

I was wrong. Even while I looked there was a sudden blast and part of the wall caved in.

I just gaped. Dust billowed into the room and obscured everything. When it cleared they were in, pointing their repeaters at me. And I felt pretty foolish.

They looked around, at the bodies on the floor, and clearly weren’t pleased. One of them turned back to me, an expression of sublime unpleasantness on his face.

“Well, well. Look what we got here.”

Slowly I stood up, the gun hanging limp in my hand. Nasty-Face came towards me, leaned forward and took it from my fingers. He put it in his pocket and then stepped back, looking at me with a gloating smile and pointing his repeater at my belly.

Just then another figure came stepping carefully over the rubble, knocking the falling dust from his shoulders. They all got out of his way respectfully while he inspected the scene.

Finally his gaze turned to me, and for the first time I came face to face with Becmath. He was a dapper figure a little below medium height, neat and careful in his movements. He wore clothes which kind of squared off his shoulders; his face, too, had a square look to it. His black hair was combed sideways and plastered down. He stared at me speculatively with his small, almost-black eyes that sometimes seemed to glitter strangely when they looked at you.

“Are you the guy who drove the car?” he said in a flat baritone voice. I nodded.

“Pretty good going.” He sauntered over to one of the bodies, turned it over with his foot. “Too bad about Heth. He was a good worker.” He glanced up at me again from beneath raised eyebrows. “You work for Klamer?”

“Yes.”

“Not any more. Klamer’s dead. From now on Mud Street is part of my territory.”

“You sure think big,” I spat out.

Strangely, he appeared not to notice the insult. “Pity we had to spoil the place,” he said. “Still, it wasn’t up to much anyway, was it?”

“Shall I finish off this klug, boss?” Nasty-Face asked eagerly?”

“What? No, I like the guy! Sitting in my car, the minute I saw him come round that corner I thought to myself, for once somebody around here’s got brains. That’s pretty rare, isn’t it?’” He jabbed a finger at me: “What’s your name?”

“Klein.”

“But he cost us five!” the other objected.

“I know that. Bring him back with us.”

Without another word he climbed back over the rubble to the outside. We followed, me with a repeater in my ribs.

We drove towards the centre of the Basement, taking the old deserted carriageway and then turning on to a newer, busier thoroughfare.

These parts of the Basement were richer and better organised than where we had just come from. Eventually the cars went down a ramp and into a garage. Steel shutters hummed quietly into place behind us. I was nudged out. At the other end of the garage more doors opened. We went through into what appeared by the bad air to be sleeping quarters. I began to get the feeling that I was in the midst of a smart outfit.

“I’ll talk to the new boy,” Becmath said. A few minutes later I found myself alone with him, very much to my surprise. For this part of the world the room was surprisingly tidy. Becmath lit a tube, offered it to me and lit one for himself. Suspiciously I sniffed it, but it was just plain weed, not the pop-derived smoke some people without respect for their persons take.

“All right,” Becmath said. “Tell me about yourself.”

So I told him. Once I had been a metal worker. But I had a fight with a bureaucrat on one of his personal jobs and suddenly I found that my card didn’t get me food from the metal workers’ tank any more. Nobody would help me because the government man had part-control over the tank.

At first I tried to survive by hiring my skills privately. But I discovered what many before me and after me had discovered: that the way down is the way down. I sank through stratum after stratum until I finished up underneath the bastion as a gun for Klamer.

He listened to my brief story attentively, drawing on his smoke every now and then and staring at the floor. Finally he nodded.

“Now you’ll work for me,” he said flatly.

“Suppose I don’t like being pushed around?”

“You’ve got no choice. Tonight I lost five. You owe me an awful lot.” Suddenly he chuckled. “Besides, now you’re on the way up! Listen, I’m tankless, just like you, but it doesn’t bother me too much any more. You want to hear my story? I’ve been tankless since I was fifteen years old, what do you think of that? Yes, I was fifteen when I first came to the Basement.”

“But how is that possible?”

“There was a fire in a big new extension on the upper pile. A big fire. My father got blamed for it. It was a great hysterical thing at the time. They shot my father. They couldn’t really do anything to his family, but just the same we never drew rations again.”

“Was your father the designer?”

“No, he was a worker.”

“Well, why blame him?” I retorted indignantly. “Why not blame whoever it was that specified combustible material?” The taboo on building materials that burn is understandably quite a strong one in Klittmann, and is not often broken.

Becmath shrugged. “I know the Basement inside out. I’ve been upstairs some, too. I know how all these one-shot outfits down here work, and I know how those one-shot outfits up there work too. The whole damned city is nothing but one-shot.”

He puffed meditatively. “I’ve had a lifetime of seeing where everybody goes wrong. Eventually, not too long ago, I was able to form my own outfit. I do it right. We move. Don’t worry about food when you’re with us. Listen, what kind of garbage were you eating with Klamer?”

I made a face. Becmath laughed. “Not too good, huh? I can imagine. Protein tasting like paper, months old. With us you’ll eat good. We’re close to having the whole undercover supply to the Basement sewn up. It’s a funny thing, but there’s more of a black market in luxury foods than there is of the plain stuff. That’s not the whole of it, of course. Once we got organised, I started taking over here, taking over there. It’s only a matter of applying force in the right places at the right time. We’re spreading out, getting bigger all the time. Already we own the distribution of pop in the Basement.”

Pop is an illegal addictive drug that can be taken in the arm or — even more dangerously — smoked. Where it’s grown has always been something of a mystery to most people. Some say there’s a secret private tank, others that a government agency grows it. Even if Becmath knew, I didn’t feel like asking just then.

Maybe it was the weed which was making me slightly high. But Becmath was beginning to get through to me. He was no ordinary Basement gangster, that was clear. Already he was affecting me in an extraordinary way with a kind of magnetism, a spell. I guess he was just a born leader.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I said shortly.

“I’ve told you, you’ve got brains. I can tell that just by looking at you. Men with brains are in short supply around here and I need them.”

He lit up a second tube then turned his oddly glittering eyes on me. “You’d better stick with my outfit, Klein, because before very long I’m going to make an empire out of the whole Basement.”