Empire of Two Worlds

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.”