I believe I would never have seen it if it hadn’t been for that mind-blowing experience in Harmen’s laboratory. The visions I had seen there had expanded my mind and made me see things from a different angle. I saw clearly now that it wasn’t any altruistic idea that had motivated Bec, but deeply selfish ambition. Valid though they were in themselves, the ideas he had taught me had been only means to establishing his own glory.
Perhaps he really had believed in them at one time; perhaps he had never ceased to imagine he still did believe in them. But towards the end he was too far gone for such claims to be credible. Had he lived, I could see nothing ahead for Killibol but an iron-jacketed tyranny.
“Hello, Klein.”
The familiar flat baritone made my blood freeze. The side door was opening. Becmath stood there — the same Becmath I had just shot and who was lying on the floor!
Harmen’s warning flashed into my mind.
Doppelganger!
Becmath moved into the room and turned over his own body with his foot, bringing the face into view. Then he looked up at me, wearing his usual sardonic smile.
“Looks like I underestimated you this once, Klein. Or maybe it was one of those subconscious mistakes Harmen talks about.”
“Bec,” I tried to speak, but could only croak.
“Don’t worry about it. I guess I did go slightly off the rails, didn’t I? You can do it your way, now. Keep the boys in line, Klein. Don’t let things get out of hand.”
Suddenly he seemed to be advancing towards me, expanding to fill my vision, his smile growing more and more weird.
Then he was gone.
For what seemed like an age I did nothing but stand trembling. I became aware of the sound of running feet outside. Reeth burst into the room holding a repeater. He looked at me, then at Bec’s corpse.
I stood him off with my handgun, trying to control myself. “I had to do it, Reeth. He was going too far.”
“You mean the plague?”
I nodded. He stared in awe at the body, then slowly put up his gun.
“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” he said with a sigh. “But the agents are already out. What are we going to do now?”
I let my own gun hand drop, the weapon hanging loosely in my fingers. Somehow I couldn’t even find the strength to return it to my holster.
“We’ll make out,” I said. “We’ll go along with Bec’s original plan, the one he drew up years ago, and modify it according to circumstances. …”
Now that there was communication with Earth we could break the tyranny of the tanks once and for all, I thought. We could bring in any amount of fresh nutrient. We could import millions of tons of topsoil to grow natural food. At first some people might die due to Bec’s meddling, but the situation would stabilise in time. There would be rapid air transit, between all cities. There would be commerce with Rheatt and the rest of Earth. It would be a two-planet empire where a man could act freely without fear of starving. As for the Rotrox, they would be dealt with.
Reeth shook his head regretfully. “And Bec promised me a dozen cities all of my own.”
“You can have them,” I told him. “There’s going to be a lot of organising to be done. But they won’t be cities peopled by slaves.”
More footsteps sounded. Heerlaw came into the office, backed by one of his countrymen. His eyes fell on Bec and the thin ribbon of blood that was creeping across the floor; then at the handgun that still hung limply in my fingers.
He stood stock-still before he spoke.
“You were right to kill him,” he said at last. “For all his genius, he was a man of blood and violence. But will you be any better?”
“I hope so,” I answered tiredly. “You’d better hope so, too, because you can’t do without me now.”
That was true: Rheatt, the Rotrox, and now Klittmann, were all joined in a contradictory web of hostility and mutual support which would collapse into a gruesome bloodbath without someone to co-ordinate it. Bec had been that man, and I was the only one who could step into his shoes. It was going to take all my energy and skill to sort this mess out.
But then, I’d had the best of training.
There was one more thing.
The Klittmann tanks, naturally, had been the first to get hit by the plague. As soon as the television landline was complete I put through calls to Rheatt to locate the food stocks Bec had mentioned. And after I had found them, I gave myself the time to put through a call to Palramara.
Her face came up on the screen. The colours never seem to come true on Earth television and her face had a pinkish, rather than a green tinge. Briefly, if it’s possible to put such things briefly, I told her what had happened and that Becmath was dead.
She received the news without any visible sign of emotion. “And what now?” she asked.
Did she mean politics — or us?
Us. That was the problem I had been wrestling with since I had killed Bec, when I hadn’t been too occupied with more important matters.
I knew I could have Palramara again if I wanted her. And I did want her. With Bec out of the way we could come together again. The attraction was still there and it would still work for us. But I also knew that I could get Dalgo off Merame if I tried hard enough. The choice was mine.
Her enlarged pupils stared at me distantly out of the screen. I swallowed.
“I’ll do what I can to get your husband released,” I said quickly. Her expression didn’t change. I looked away.
“Goodbye, Palramara.”
Abruptly I cut the connection.
I’d always been fairly lonely. I could be lonely again; it was no sweat.
For the thousandth time I wondered if Becmath’s doppelganger had ceased to exist when it vanished, or if it had been drawn off into some other part of the universe. I hoped it had been annihilated, because I didn’t like to think of him wandering around somewhere, lost and also alone.
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Also by Barrington J. Bayley
Age of Adventure
Annihilation Factor
Collision with Chronos
Empire of Two Worlds
Sinners of Erspia
Star Winds
The Fall of Chronopolis
The Forest of Peldain
The Garments of Caean
The Grand Wheel
The Great Hydration
The Pillars of Eternity
The Rod of Light
The Soul of the Robot
The Star Virus
The Zen Gun
The Knights of the Limits
The Seed of Evil
Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008)
Barrington J. Bayley was born in Birmingham and began writing science fiction in his early teens. After serving in the RAF, he took up freelance writing on features, serials and picture strips, mostly in the juvenile field, before returning to straight SF. He was a regular contributor to the influential New Worlds magazine and an early voice in the New Wave movement.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Barrington J. Bayley 1972
All rights reserved.
The right of Barrington J. Bayley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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ISBN 978 0 575 10204 0
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Empire of Two Worlds Page 16