Empire of Two Worlds Read online

  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.”

  Three

  Becmath was not long in fulfilling his promise.

  In less than a year he was the biggest man in the Basement. Nearly all enterprises were sewn up; that is to say, they paid dues to him in order to stay in operation. There were a few, though, that he left alone. “You always need room to manoeuvre,” he used to say.

  I saw what he meant when the cops started to get interested, and sent in one of their patrol sloops. They didn’t usually do that. They had enough trouble keeping law and order in the upper reaches and tended to leave the too-violent Basement to stew in its own juice. As might normally be expected, their intrusion caused trouble and they retreated with a badly damaged vehicle, but without being able to blame it on Bec. Somehow he lured them into a showdown with the Vokleit Gang, one of the independent outfits he had left alone.

  In that year, too, I rose quickly in Bec’s organisation and became his lieutenant. Not all of his inner circle appreciated my rapid advancement, but most of them had sense to see that a special relationship was growing between me and Bec, so they accepted it. Only Grale, the Nasty-Face who had wanted to put a bullet in my back at Klamer’s, hated my guts for it.

  Already I could see that Becmath’s ambitions were beginning to look beyond the Basement. After the police raid he told me to design and start building the sloop, like the ones the police had but bigger and better. Plainly he thought that at some time in the future
he might have to face them on equal terms.

  One day I went into his office to find him smoking weed and brooding. “Sit down, Klein,” he said. “There’s something I want to talk over.”

  He often used me to sharpen his ideas on. I took a tube from the box on the table and lit up.

  “You know,” he said, “it’s not only in the Basement they got gangsters. They got gangsters upstairs too.”

  “What, you mean some of those government bosses?”

  He waved his hand. “Them too, but that’s not what I meant. There are private interests, private empires just like we got down here. Only they can throw their weight around with no sweat. Because the basis of real power lies upstairs, and they’ve got it.

  “You know what I mean, Klein,” he added, staring at me with his steady black eyes. “I mean the tanks.”

  “You certainly can’t do much unless you can eat,” I muttered.

  “That’s right. Have you ever wondered about something, Klein? Have you ever wondered why nothing ever changes in Klittmann? Why we do everything in the same way we did it generations ago?”

  His remark puzzled me. I shrugged. “Why, no. What other way is there?”

  “That’s right, what other way.” For some moments he sat gazing at the nerve-calming smoke that plumed up from the end of the tube he was holding. “You know, it was centuries ago, maybe a thousand years ago, that men came from Earth and settled on Killibol. They came at the peak of an age of science and technology. An age of great change.”

  “I didn’t know that.” To tell the truth I had difficulty even in comprehending it.

  “Few do. But as soon as the cities rose and the gateway from Earth was closed, something happened. Everything petrified, even technology and engineering, and we finished up with what we got today — stasis. There isn’t systematic knowledge any more, only habitual techniques handed down from generation to generation. I’ve got a theory as to why that happened. Firstly, the need for food comes before everything else. The tanks are a stranglehold that stops people from altering anything — especially since they are more or less in the hands of a few and the others are beholden to those few. You can’t think about anything if in thinking about it you endanger your protein supply. Secondly, the fact that Killibol is a dead world causes each city to bunch up in itself and prevents traffic between them. It wasn’t like that on Earth. There was food everywhere and the cities all had intercourse with one another all the time. It must have been real lively. Maybe you need that intercourse between cities to get things moving.”

  “How do you know all this, Bec?”

  “I’ve read books.” He picked up an ancient, dog-eared volume that was lying on the table. “There’s a guy comes down into the Basement looking for pop. Tone, they call him: Tone the Taker. He’s quite a strange fellow. He knows a place where he gets all these old books and I make him bring them in exchange for pop.”

  Slowly Bec got to his feet and put the book away in a cupboard. “Wouldn’t it be a fine thing, Klein, if people could be freed of their slavery to the tanks?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “So it is. But maybe the stasis would be broken if the tanks didn’t have bosses — that’s where the real stranglehold lies. Supposing Klittmann was ruled by a rod of iron, by a real strong king or dictator, like they had on Earth thousands of years ago, and the tanks were made available to all. State property, like they were supposed to be when Klittmann was founded? Maybe we could even move in on some of the other cities.”

  “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about, boss?” While I could just barely get the drift of what he was saying, I didn’t at that time see what it had to do with me.

  He cast me a sardonic glance and I sensed he was disappointed in me.

  “No. We’ve taken over the Basement, but we’re not going to stop with the Basement. Those big shots upstairs aren’t so big once you take their protein tanks away. Klein, we need a tank.”

  His words practically stopped my mind. I saw for the first time that Bec’s theorising came to a practical point. But it seemed such an enormous step that I just couldn’t encompass it.

  “Bec — how?” I goggled.

  “You see?” he retorted with a grimace. “You can’t even imagine it. You think of yourself as tankless, as a gunman living outside the law. But what is the law? It’s a gun, it’s a mob, just like us. Once we’ve got what they’ve got, we can take the whole damned city.”

  “You sure talk big.”

  “Somebody round here has to. Now listen, you want to know how we’ll do it. It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. Is the sloop ready?”

  “Yes.” I had, in fact, tried out the new vehicle a few days before.

  “Good, we’ll need it. There’s a guy called Blind Bissey. He owns a tank, just one, located secretly in one of the quiet quarters on the level just above us. Because of it he’s able to run a few factories, have a staff around him, trade, live in style, things like that.”

  Bec’s arguments were beginning to impress me. “Hell, isn’t that just what we do?”

  “That’s right. Tone the Taker knows where the tank is. As a matter of fact, it’s right close by his store of old books. That’s another reason why I want to go up there. Here’s what we’ll do. One night we’ll drive up there by a planned route — and take over the tank.” He raised his eyebrows as he spoke the last words. “Simple.”

  My head was singing with the audacity of it all. “We’ll never get away with it!”

  “Why not? If it looks like we can’t hold the place we’ll round up the technicians and bring them down here, and take as much organic material from the tanks as we can and bring that down here as well. That’s all you need, remember: organic material and know-how. We’ll set the tank up anew in the Basement. Meanwhile I’ll get in touch with Blind Bissey and offer him a partnership.”

  “It’s war,” I said with a feeling of foreboding. “We’ll be smashed into the ground.”

  “You think so? Where’s Bissey without his tank? He’ll want it back so bad he’ll give me fifty per cent to get it. He’ll even call off the cops to get it. I tell you, basically he’s a mobster like us. So Bissey’s outfit will be our first step on the way to real influence. Once we’re upstairs we’ll start to edge in on the workers’ unions, take over more tanks, form alliances in the government and even the cops. Given time, there won’t be anybody who can stop us.”

  “You seem to have it all worked out,” I admitted.

  He smiled. “I’ve read a lot of books, Klein. Some of the people who lived ages ago were pretty smart.”

  The sloop purred smoothly along the gleaming metal street, taking the regular right curves with barely a whisper. Behind us followed three smaller cars to complement the gunmen who were crammed into the big vehicle.

  The district was quiet, almost deathly. On either side of the broad avenue the structures presented a continuous façade that swept up to join perfectly with the roof overhead, dully visible behind the glare of the street lights. Bec had had the route reconnoitred pretty thoroughly; we knew there would be no police patrols along at this hour and we were reckoning on a smooth operation.

  Each vehicle towed a big square vat. The four of them wouldn’t enable us to carry away all the contents of the tank with us if need be, but they would give us a good part of it; and organics are the most precious thing there is on Killibol.

  Becmath drove. In the seat next to him was Tone the Taker, a skinny, nervous individual who had taken pop in the arm before we set out. Pop addicts nearly always go to pieces if they’re without their supply. Their nervous systems need it.

  Crowded in between the driving seat and the main troop force were myself and Reeth, another of Bec’s inner circle. Reeth was slight-bodied, slick and nimble. Becmath had chosen him well. He kept his eyes skinned and alone of all the henchmen he was sometimes openly critical of his boss’s decisions, a quality which Bec seemed to value.

  “Slow her
e,” Tone said, “there’s a hidden turning on your right.”

  As the sloop slowed to a dawdle we saw an arch closed off with a big sheet of steel. It could be opened, Tone had explained, only from the inside, but that, of course, would not detain us long. We had brought impact explosives with us, the same that are used to punch out odd-shaped sheets of metal.

  In less than a minute the stuff was taped in place. There was a short, sharp bang and a piece of steel clanged to the floor, leaving a hole large enough for a man to get through. Tone stepped inside and shortly afterwards the arch’s door slid upwards and disappeared.

  Our convoy bumped in darkness down a sloping, uneven surface. Tone instructed us to stop. We got out and proceeded on foot by the light of hand-lamps.

  I felt an irrepressible excitement. Never before had I seen one of those places where they make food; I felt, in fact, a vague kind of mystique about it, like you would about your own mother’s womb. No wonder, I thought, that the tank controllers had found it easy to hang on to them and make other men subservient by means of them. It took a man like Becmath to overcome that unspoken feeling of reverence and claim a tank for himself.

  Suddenly Tone flung open a door and we were there. Faces turned towards us in bewilderment as we blundered in, handguns and repeaters darting about on the look-out for trouble.

  There wasn’t much to see. We were in a gallery, not very large — maybe twenty or thirty feet long — one wall of which was covered with dials and switches. At either end were doors leading to the culture banks.

  We herded the shocked technical crew to the far end. Out of curiosity I opened one of the doors and peered in. The light was dim and the air had a dank, musky smell. There were a number of short corridors. And that was all. The tank itself, I knew, was sealed.

  I closed the door again. “What now?” I asked Bec in a low tone.

  “Better not try to hold this place,” he said. “We could, for a while, but what then? We’ll get a better bargaining position from our own territory.”