Barrington Bayley - Empire of Two Worlds

“You bet we’re hungry,” Hassmann complained. “What we’re eating wouldn’t keep a dog alive.”

Bec nodded distantly, as if his thoughts were far away. “So you want food. O.K., then listen to this. There’s a place where food grows on the ground from horizon to horizon. When you walk you’re treading it underfoot, you can’t see the floor for everything that’s growing there. Food just for the picking up. The name of that place is Earth.”

Grale gave him a pained look. “Earth? Don’t kid us on, boss, we’re not stupid.”

“I’ll reserve an opinion on that. Get used to the idea, because Earth is where we’re going.”

“But that’s impossible.” This time it was Tone who spoke.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bec answered. “Centuries ago the gateway from Earth was destroyed, blown up, its substance dispersed. The connection with Earth went with it and nobody has passed either way since. But there’s something you don’t know. Back in Klittmann I spent a lot of time talking to the alchemist. I’d call him the wisest man in Klittmann. He’s studied all the old books and everything and he told me something about the gateway nobody else realises.”

Harmen took all this praise impassively. The old coot, I thought, he’s behind all this. He’s captivated Bec with his weird theories.

“You may or may not know,” Bec continued, “that the gate consisted of substance that existed both here on Killibol and simultaneously on Earth. What I for one didn’t know was that the gateway was opened in the first place by an alchemist. That right, Harmen? Go on, tell them.”

The alk nodded soberly. “True it is, as can be read in the ancient documents by one able enough to read the arcane symbols. The substance of the gateway was derived from tincture, the prima materia of existence which is not governed by the laws of space and time. Else how was the gateway possible — how could exoteric science have created something that existed in two locations at the same time? Tincture is indestructible, indivisible, and hence—” He broke off. “Let your leader tell you.”

“It’s certainly not in any of the workmen’s manuals,” Reeth admitted, rubbing his chin. “To tell the truth I’ve never given a thought in my life to how the gateway worked. That was all in the past, long before I was born.”

“What Harmen means is,” Bec resumed, “that though the stuff the gateway was made of was scattered over hundreds of thousands of miles by an atomic explosion, it never really lost its cohesion. Over the centuries it sort of gathered itself up again, attracted to itself, as it were. And what’s more, in the same place it was before. Harmen calculates that by now the gateway is reconstituted again.”

Reeth was frowning. “You mean the molecules have all gravitated back to where they were before the explosion?”

“That’s right,” Bec began, but the alk corrected him. “Tincture has no molecules. Atomic and molecular matter are corruptions of the primordial hyle, which is single, whole and indivisible, yet not in a way that we can readily understand. To the gross senses it may seem possible for it to be divided in certain conditions. Then again, very great force can cause it to become attenuated to the point where it apparently vanishes; yet given time it reverts to the form given to it when it was first distilled. Hylic objects cannot be made to change their shape except by very difficult alchemical processes.”

“And this is what will have happened to the gateway?” I queried.

“The gateway is not pure hyle, it is true; but the derivation is close enough for the same to hold.”

“Well, there you have it, boys,” Bec finished. “Don’t worry if you don’t understand all those technicalities. The important thing is that we know where the gateway is. And we should be able to reach it before our food runs out.”

Grale had been cleaning his gun. He threw it down in an expression of disgust, a rare show of rebellion for him. “The whole thing is cockeyed crazy! You know what I think, boss? We’re being taken by an alk loon!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Reeth said in calmer, meditative tones. “It sounds reasonable. I mean, it hangs together. But if you ask me it’s an awful long shot.”

“Sure, it’s a long shot,” Bec replied amiably. “It’s a gamble. Maybe we’ll never reach the gateway. Or maybe Harmen here is wrong about it. We’ll soon know.”

Grale was angry. “We should have stayed in Klittmann!“

“In Klittmann you’d be dead already. You think we had any choice about getting out? Wise up — we’re all that’s left of the organisation. In Klittmann we were the core, the main office, and the cops wouldn’t have let up until they got us. I don’t like this situation any more than you do.”

Tone sniffed. His face had that sneaky, twitchy look that meant his system was crying out for a recharge. I knew what he was thinking. Whether there was any pop on Earth. Maybe he hoped that grew out of the ground there, too.

Bec resumed driving. I slid into the adjoining seat.

“What’s it going to be like on Earth, boss?”

“There’s no knowing. It seems Earth and Killibol exist at different… time-rates from one another.” Plainly he had difficulty with the concept. “Sometimes one speeds up relative to the other, sometimes slows down. While centuries have passed here on Killibol something like a million years or more have gone by on Earth. It’s anybody’s guess what we’ll find.”

I let that sink in for a minute. “So it’s a one-way trip. There’s no coming back because….”

Bec glanced at me fiercely. “Klein, we’re coming back! Don’t ever doubt that!” Suddenly he chuckled. “Confusing, isn’t it? Think about it. If we spent a year on Earth and came back here, we’d find that only seconds had passed on Killibol. Actually it isn’t even that complicated. Harmen says the two planets are currently synchronised in their time-rates. He says they’re both at the apogee of their cycles. So if everything goes right — and I only give us fifty-fifty — we’ll be able to pass to and fro at will between Earth and the Dark World.”

“The Dark World?”

“Sure. That’s what the old books call Killibol.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Of course, it’s never very bright out in the open here. Not as bright as in the cities.”

“It’s not what you’d call dark, either.”

“That’s right.” He was silent for a moment. Then he lifted his eyes upwards. There were stars in the sky. I’d watched them often in the last few days.

“You know something, Klein? Earth is in another galaxy. Billions of light-years away. Just think of it! It’s an awful long way away.”

A day later Bec brought the sloop to a halt for a few minutes. The engines ticked over in the midst of the same sombre, grey plains. In the middle distance stood a city.

“According to the map that’s Chombrel,” Bec said. “It’s a dead city now. Their tanks caught a plague.”

He circled it slowly, studying it. Something about it seemed to interest him. And in fact it didn’t look like Klittmann. It was more sculptured. Its walls rose straighter, but then broke off jaggedly.

“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.