Empire of Two Worlds

When Tone had shuffled out and left us alone in the drape-hung room Bec was laughing.

“Would you believe it! “

I stroked my chin. “It’s certainly remarkable.”

“You can say that again. It’s all just the same here as it is on Killibol. I’ll bet it’s the same all over the damned universe. People falling into the same traps. Dope. Pop. Blue Space.” He grunted. “The same old rackets will work every time.”

“It is Earth, after all. Where we came from.”

“Yeah, but a million years later.”

“They’re still human,” I commented. “I guess humanity will always be the same, will always have the same weaknesses.”

“I guess so. If this thing works out it could be big for us. How do you feel about the journey?”

“Nervous. Having to nurse the Taker and all. What do you want me to do?”

“Just scout this place and report back. Whether it’s defended and whether you think we can take it. Try not to be conspicuous.”

Looking at myself in a mirror, thinking of those thick black goggles I would be wearing (we had had better ones made in a native workshop), I wondered just how I was going to do that.

Seven

There was a road leading out of Hesha, winding over the horizon between low hills. We made the journey in a Rheattic carriage driven by a light motor that burned some kind of oil. Towed behind us was a trailer carrying enough of it to see us through.

We had a Heshan guide, too, who was supposed to know the way to the Blue Space Valley. He said it was five days’ journey away. I asked him if he knew why we wanted to go there. He said no. I told him it was for the sake of my friend, who was very sick without the special drug he could get there. The guide looked very doleful and told me the concentrated drug could not be lawfully used.

While we travelled I wondered about a society completely swamped by a drug habit. Klittmann was riddled, of course, rotten with it, but only ever by a minority of people. Pop was a killer, raddling the body and distorting the mind. Blue Space, on the other hand, was comparatively mild in its effects. It seemed to induce a calm, fatalistic attitude in its users. The Rheattites had a fetish about beauty and beautiful things, and Blue Space seemed to open up their appreciation of them.

I thought to myself that maybe I would try it some time. A few doses couldn’t hurt me. But I pushed the thought from my mind; how often had I heard people say the same about pop, only to turn up as pathetic wrecks a few years later? Besides, the attractiveness and harmlessness of the Rheattites wasn’t going to stop Bec from putting the squeeze on them if he could. With my background and my associates it would be just as well not to become infected with their way of looking at things.

Only one incident in the outgoing journey is worth mentioning. We were crossing a flat, grassy plain. I heard a faint droning noise over our heads. Looking up, I saw something flying steadily across the sky from east to west.

At first I thought it was a bird, but its wings were stiff and it had a long metallic body. It could only be a machine. I got my repeater ready, but it made no attempt to attack us but merely flew on out of sight. Our guide told us not to worry; it was a Rheattic aircraft.

I wondered what else the green people had that we hadn’t seen.

We left the road just before reaching the valley, which made our guide become suspicious and want to know why. I told him to shut up and lead the way.

The carriage wouldn’t travel well over an unmade surface. We proceeded on foot and climbed up a steep slope, almost a mountain. It was covered in shale and nothing grew on it — something to do with the special qualities of the soil that allowed it alone to grow the Blue Space plants, I imagined. I thought of leaving our guide behind for the last stretch, but he might have lit out and caused us trouble. So I forced him down on his belly and we crawled the last few yards.

The slope ended abruptly and curved away on either side in a sharp ridge. Actually the valley wasn’t a valley at all; it was a crater made by the impact of a meteor some thousands of years before. The slope on the other side was just as steep as the one we had scrambled up, but the depression was more shallow. There was a break in the crater wall, facing north, which I could see clearly and which the Rheattites used as an entrance.

The whole of the crater floor was made into an orchard of small trees with impossibly luxurious, petal-like blossoms, all pink and red. There were no trees remotely like them in Hesha. As soon as we poked our heads over the rim of the crater we got a face full of the perfume from these blossoms that almost lifted us into the air. It was a sickly sweet smell, rising straight up like a convection current.

Tone breathed it in and let out a shuddering, happy sigh. His system, straining with need, had recognised its panacea.