Empire of Two Worlds

“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?”