Empire of Two Worlds

“That’s fine by me, Commander Imnitrin. We’ll swear allegiance. We’ll become men of the tribe of Rotrox.”

Imnitrin gazed at us thoughtfully, speculatively.

Nine

A few weeks later I stood with Becmath, Imnitrin and three of his high-ranking officers, looking at the battleground below through the open side of one of their flying cylinders.

The plain was flanked by gently rising hills to our left, and broke into a series of gullies on the right. All morning Rheattite infantry had been filing into the plain, advancing towards the Rotrox columns camped at one end.

Imnitrin peered down at the massing Rheattites. “They are many, and well-armed,” he said in his chilling, incisive voice. “Could it be that your plan has gone wrong?”

“We’ll find that out when the fighting starts,” Bec answered gruffly.

We were floating about fifty feet above a round-topped hill. A few other cylinders drifted slowly above the landscape, casting shadows on the green-skinned Rheattites. Behind us in the cavernous interior of the cylinder was Rotrox communications equipment: oval screens of a pale blue colour, like icy mirrors, surmounting grey metal cabinets.

The television system had quite startled me when I first saw it in operation. We had vision phones back in Klittmann, but their definition was crude and blurred compared with the Rotrox sets. The Rotrox could send in colour, too, but the colours came out odd and wrong. Most surprising, they used Hertzian transmission without wires. On Killibol wireless sending of sound or pictures was never considered a practicable proposition, but then we lacked Earth’s ionosphere. The Rotrox, however, used television even to keep in touch with their Council of Chiefs back on Merame.

It was funny, I thought, how the Rotrox were ahead of us in some things but so backward in others. I guess different life styles produce different technologies.

I picked up a telescope to scan the faces of the Rheattites. They didn’t seem to be as shaky as we had hoped. I knew Bec was worried. A lot hung on the outcome of this battle.

My mind went back over the past few weeks. Bec’s gamble had paid off. The Rotrox had allowed him to send me to Blue Space Valley with a television transceiver and I had arrived to find Grale, Reeth and Hassmann firmly in command. Tone the Taker was there, too — my bullets had missed him — but he was barely conscious. The stuff he was taking now had put him in a permanent trance. The expression on his face was something dreamy and weird.

Straight away Bec had shown his genius for administration. He drew up a plan for distributing Blue Space to the populations under Rotrox control, sending me detailed instructions on what to give each collector that called. Using both Rheattites and Meramites, he was already setting up a pusher organisation, holding the Rheattite population in a rigid web of supply and demand. At one stroke he had begun the process of drawing the strings of power towards his own person.

The Rotrox were impressed. They admired success, by whatever method. Bec had a knack of getting along with them and they co-operated with his suggestions. Consequently we had all (leaving aside Tone and Harmen) taken oaths of fealty, mingling our blood with that of Imnitrin himself. The ceremony was pretty messy and the wound in my arm still hadn’t healed. But we belonged to the Rotrox Tribe now.

Imnitrin had made an attempt to put Blue Space Valley in Rotrox hands. Bec had firmly resisted the idea and in the end the Meramites, realising that we had to be cautious on our own account, had not pressed the matter. Reeth and Hassmann were still there now, making sure nothing sneaky happened behind our backs.

Bec had instantly cut off the pipeline to the army massing further along the border. Why they hadn’t taken the trouble to invest and hold Blue Space Valley themselves is just another example of Rheattite ineptness — but it had become clear that they already had reserves of the dope. Not enough to be completely happy, perhaps, but enough not to be falling over themselves the way we had hoped. Bec had practically promised the invaders victory and if they didn’t get it their attitude towards us would change. They might even wipe us out. If they won, on the other hand, they would treat us like brothers. To try to lower the opposition’s morale Bec had sent in agents to pass the word around that there would be Blue Space available if the Rheattites threw down their arms, surrendered or even simply lost.

Imnitrin was also using a telescope, studying, not the ground, but the sky. “The enemy approaches,” he announced. “Battle begins.”