Empire of Two Worlds

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.