Empire of Two Worlds

I found my way inside the city, grabbed a Rheattite officer and went looking for Bec. The destruction inside Klittmann was unbelievable. Heavy explosives had been let off with criminal disregard for the buttresses that kept the whole place standing up. Prowling black sloops patrolled the dusty streets. The usual background noise of activity was absent, and in the silence I heard firing going on elsewhere in the city. It seemed that for the most part Klittmann was already in our hands. Many of the elevators had ceased working and we rumbled tortuously up ramps in one of the sloops, making for the upper levels where Bec had his headquarters.

Compared with the Basement where I had lived for so long before leaving Klittmann, the upper reaches we were now moving in were classy; but nearly ten years on Earth had dulled my appreciation of fine differences. Now it all looked sordid, monotonous and claustrophobic. Nothing but metal and concrete and stale, cold-smelling air.

There had been an awful lot of killing. At first I thought the Rotrox were the cause of that; but shortly before we reached Bec’s hang-out we crossed a big plaza where I saw that Bec’s revenge had been complete and vicious.

I made the driver stop the sloop and I got out to have a closer look. Piled in the plaza were bodies, their hands tied, riddled with bullet holes. Their fine dress told me they were high class: probably government members and tank owners.

More bodies hung by the neck from the overhead longerons. Dimly I realised that everybody whom Bec had looked on as an enemy in the past was here. I caught sight of Blind Bissey, the owner whose tank we had appropriated, swinging listlessly with eyes bulging, blind in death as they had been in life.

Bec had even killed Bissey’s dog.

Wearily I climbed back in the sloop and signalled the driver to carry on.

When I walked in on Bec he was sitting in a fairly small, untidy office, a nearby table piled with papers. He was smoking a tube of weed meditatively. It was like old times.

If he was surprised to see me, he hid it. He scarcely moved.

“Hello, Klein. Didn’t expect you so soon.”

“So I believe,” I said stonily.

I took a good look at him; as if seeing him for the first time: much smaller than me, a stocky, dapper body, the squared-off shoulders and dark, conservative Klittmann-style clothes; the square face and plastered-down black hair. The only big difference from ten years ago was that there was more jowl beneath the jaw.

He glanced up at me. “What happened to Grale?”

“He’s dead. He tried to kill me, Bec. You should have sent another man to do the job. Or is that the way you wanted it?”

His gaze became speculative and distantly angry. “Whaddya mean he’s dead? Who gives you the O.K. to go and wipe out Grale?”

“I’ve told you,” I said evenly, “his idea was to wipe me out and tell you he was defending himself.”

Bec listened while I told him the story of how I had tricked Grale with the blind. Finally he chuckled.

“Well, it looks like I had to lose one of you. Frankly, I’m glad it wasn’t you. Care for a smoke?”

I took the tube he offered. It was the first in a long time.

“It looks like you have it all sewn up,” I said, drawing the smoke into my lungs.

“That’s right. It sure felt good to get even with some of the klugs running this place.”

I wondered what had happened to all the philosophy Bec used to talk. Right now he seemed to be motivated by nothing but revenge. It gave me a bad feeling to see him gloat.

“Yes,” I said, “I saw them on my way in. What happens next, Bec?”

“Things are going to move fast from now on. Very fast. I’ll be needing your help, Klein. Right now we have Klittmann. We have very little time to knock it into shape. Because by the time a year is out we’ll have damn near the whole of Killibol.”

I held the smoke in my lungs for an astonished few seconds.

“But how?” It wasn’t possible to conquer all the planet’s cities, besieging them one by one, in anything like so short a time.

Bec’s face became sardonic. “Technique, Klein, technique. It beats brute force every time.”

“I don’t see how any kind of technique is going to do what you’re saying.”

“Tank plague.”

I couldn’t have heard him right. I stared at him, puzzled and frightened. Ice began to congeal in my insides.

Tank and plague, when said together, are the two most terrible words on Killibol. More than one city had wasted away and died, destroyed by a famine nothing can relieve. Nobody ever visits the empty shell of such a city, not even centuries after.