Barrington Bayley - Empire of Two Worlds

There was a humming in my ears. The feverish visions passed. I was standing in Harmen’s chamber amid the dying whine of power. Gasping, I wiped the film of sweat off my face.

“Is it real?” I breathed, “Or an hallucination?”

Harmen shrugged. “There may not be so much difference between the two. I prefer to say that it is real.”

He opened the big wooden doors. Thankfully I staggered out. I didn’t think I cared for the experience he had forced on me.

“And is that the Tincture you talk about?”

“No,” he said, frowning. “It comes close to the reality of the Tincture — but in an extremely attenuated form that cannot be maintained. It is an ephemeral, partial manifestation of the Tincture brought about by extreme stress. Hence, like the corrupted Tincture of the gateway, it confers some of its properties — in this case visions of far-away events, and glimpses into the operations of matter in all its forms. To try to grasp it is like trying to grasp at air. Fully manifested Tincture is a palpable solid; it can be handled and made into an object.”

Still breathing deeply, I glared around the bubbling laboratory. “That certainly must be something,” I said. “You reckon you’re going to make this stuff?”

“I believe I am close. The electric tension method I have just employed is not able to cross the final threshold… but we have other, more traditional processes under way.” Harmen ran his fingers through his untidy hair with a hint of weariness. “To be frank, there is no reliable record that the final aim has been achieved by any man, except for the notable Hermes Trismegistus who became as a god. But no one doubts that the goal is attainable. And I am closer than anyone for many centuries.”

He steered me between his watching apprentices and back towards his study. “There is something else of which I should in fairness warn you. You now possess a doppelganger.”

“A what?”

“You remember the transient beings who came into existence as the field built up? You have been in contact, however remotely, with an attenuated Tincture field. I have found from experience that transient creatures fall away easily from such a field. There is now a phantasmal duplicate of yourself which will show itself in moments of extreme stress and for a short time after your death.”

“I don’t seem to remember asking for that!” I yelled angrily. All the bad stories I had heard about alks came flooding to my mind. I was ready to believe them, now.

But Harmen was unperturbed. “It will do you no harm, You won’t even know about it, in all probability. I mention it only to forewarn you that Becmath also has a doppelganger.”

“Bec?”

“Of course. He has always taken a close interest in my work. He also has gone through your recent experience. He drew great confidence from it.”

In a strange way the visions I had been given, hallucinatory or not, had also given me confidence. Something had jelled in my mind. I felt more clear now about what was worth doing and what was not.

I flew back to Parkland and decided to rejoin Bec straight away. Ordering an aircraft to be readied to take me to the gateway, I went back to my private tower to clean up and get a change of clothes.

As soon as I stepped out of the elevator I stopped short. Grale was there. He was holding a handgun. Backing him up were two Rheattites of the League of Rheatt.

Grale grinned in his most unpleasant way.

“Hello, Klein. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, going cold. “You’re supposed to be on Killibol.”

“I’m pretty annoyed about that,” he admitted, raising his eyebrows. “I wanted to be there when the fun started. But don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of laughs left when I finally walk in on dear old Klittmann.”

“Does Bec know you’re here?” I asked, measuring the distance between us.

Grale sniggered. His face looked even more greasy than I had ever seen it. “Bec sent me here, Klein. He figures you’re getting soft. He wants you out of the way till the job’s over”

So it was a bum steer after all. Bec had realised my indecision. Maybe he had thought I would foul things up for him.

“And you’re the guy to do it, eh, Grale?” The old hatred between us flared in the air until it was almost red.

“Who else? I’ve waited twelve years for Bec finally to wise up to you. It’s a real pleasure to see the roles reversed.” Suddenly he snarled at the Rheattites: “O.K., you klugs, I’ll handle it. Beat it.” Then, remembering they didn’t understand Klittmann, he repeated his instructions in faltering Rheattic.

As they left I edged along the wall. Grale was a pent-up spring, a frustrated killing machine. He was dangerous.

Alone with me, his grin became even wider. “You know something, Klein? Bec just wants me to keep you here cosy for a few days. So you can’t go giving orders he doesn’t like to those Rheattites you’ve nursed all these years. But why should I? Bec would understand if you raised objections. I might even have to kill you in self-defence. Then I could get back to the invasion.”

I could hardly expect Grale to pass up this golden opportunity to get rid of me. He raised his handgun, his eyes shining and the lips drawn back from his white teeth. The knuckle of his index finger whitened.

Now I was opposite the blind covering the hole that, uniquely among the mobsters, I had included in the wall of my living quarters. I yanked back the blind, stepping aside.

Grale gave a yell as the sunlight flashed into his uncovered eyes. His bullet slammed into the wall beside me. He fired again, blindly. I was blind, too, but I wasn’t dazzled. My eyes were closed. My gun was in my hand and I loosed off all fifteen shots in quick succession. Groping, I closed the blind.

Not all my shots had found their mark, but there were more than enough red stains on Grale’s black jacket. He was as dead as he deserved to be.

I took a repeater from the arms cupboard, picking up a spare clip. The two Rheattites down below found the gun staring them in the midriff when I left the tower.

They backed away, consternation in their eyes. Very likely they had heard the gunfire and it unnerved them to see the white masters fighting among themselves.

“What were your orders?” I barked.

One shook his head. “We had no particular orders. We were to act as guards. The situation was not explained to us.”

“Well, I’ll explain it to you. The man upstairs is dead. He was trying to settle a private score, but I beat him to it. Does he mean anything to you?”

They shook their heads again. Grale was almost a stranger to them. I was the boss they were used to.

“All right,” I said curtly. “Let’s get back to Headquarters.”

A few hours later I had flown to the gateway. The experience Harmen had given me was like a vivid dream overhanging everything, and I decided I was going to be near Bec for the next part of the proceedings, whether he wanted me there or not.

There were no aircraft at the base camp, and no pilots who knew the course. They were all outside Klittmann. The engineers had been putting down a landline so there would very shortly be television communication between Rheatt and Bec’s army, but I didn’t want to announce I was coming in case Bec got any more ideas about delaying me. So I hitched a ride on one of the supply wagons.

We took about eight days getting there. Already I was too late for the big fight.

The plain outside Klittmann was strewn with our wagons and a few parked aircraft, but evidently the sloops and the fighting men were already inside the city. The great grey pile of Klittmann was quite a sight: they’d bombed it heavily and one whole side of it was blasted open, masses of concrete having tumbled to the ground and the inside of the city being revealed in all its layer-upon-layer complexity.