“I’d like to talk to him,” I said suddenly.
Imnitrin smiled. “You wish to remind him of the situation? Good! He will not attack you; he has learned what that would mean to him. I will wait down the corridor.”
He left, closing but not locking the door behind him.
“Who is there?” Dalgo said in a hollow voice. “The light hurts me.”
“My name is Klein,” I told him.
“Klein?” He seemed to be searching his mind for the name. “Ah, yes. Helper of Becmath, the Rotrox puppet who rules my country. They keep me informed, you see.”
I wondered if we were being bugged. I hesitated, then said: “Have the Rotrox never offered you a deal? Maybe you could be useful to them. They might free you if you swear loyalty to them, like I did.”
The faintest hint of a grim smile came to his lips. He turned his eyes away from the light. “I am giving them everything they want from me: pleasure at my discomfort. I have nothing else they need. I know that my country can never be freed from its oppression and for that reason alone they keep me alive. If I had hope, that would give them reason to kill me.”
Wearily he passed his hand across his eyes. “Perhaps you serve them because you have no choice. I am their prisoner because I have no choice. There is no question of co-operation. They are no more than a blot on creation, but unfortunately the force does not exist that could expunge them.”
“Your wife is still in Rheatt,” I said after a pause.
He sighed. “Is she well?”
“Yes.”
“She believes I am dead, I suppose.”
“No,” I told him. “She knows you’re alive. The Rotrox saw to that.”
A look of doggedness crossed his face. “Can you see her?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“If you truly wish me well, tell her I am dead.”
I could think of nothing else useful to say so I left, leaving the cell door open behind me. Up the corridor Imnitrin greeted me with the pinched-up, mincing expression of Rotrox hilarity.
“I confess I listened to your conversation via a hidden microphone,” he piped. “My admiration for your cleverness increases apace. Your remarks were most ingenious. His mental anguish will intensify during the next few days as he relives the past.” He gave a silvery snigger. “But come — we have prepared entertainments in your honour.”
He took me out of the dungeon, through the maze of corridors that riddled the rock of Merame, and to one of the elevators that slid ceaselessly up and down the inner wall of the crater.
We sank to the bottom. No sunlight penetrated down here, though its horizontal rays could be seen flashing above. Through them, stars shone vividly like a carpet of gems in the sky. The crater floor was clothed in a kind of luminous gloom, and somewhere in the distance I could hear the muffled rattle of drums. Towards this sound we set off across the springy turf.
We walked for a good mile or more. A large number of buildings and fenced-off areas littered the crater floor: the Rotrox apparently used it as a recreation area. Shortly before we reached our destination I saw in one of the many glades a prime example of a stomach-churning Rotrox diversion.
On a piece of earth about fifty yards across, and fringed with drooping trees, a score or more of Rheattite people stood planted in the ground. That’s right: planted people. It was obvious that they couldn’t move their feet from where they were standing. Some were moaning, rocking gently to and fro; others wailed loudly, waving their arms imploringly at the sky.
Imnitrin smirked to see my amazement. “This is Tinikimni’s Garden of the Vegetable People. I chanced to joke to him, one day, that as on Earth plants are green, so the green Rheattite people ought to be plants. It pleased Tinikimni’s sense of the humorous to make a pleasant little spot stocked with such planted people. On to their feet are grafted composite animal-vegetable placentae which put down roots deep into the soil. From the soil they draw nutrients which they convert into blood. The blood is then infused through the plant-people’s feet, giving them adequate nutrition. A pretty conceit, is it not? Quite inadvertently the transfusion process causes some agony, thus adding pain to their despair.”
Imnitrin’s understanding of me seemed to be that I could not fail to be amused and delighted by all this.
A few minutes later we came to a large compound where the dark liqueur the Rotrox drank flowed plentifully and warriors performed frenzied tribal dances to pulsing drums. For the first time since we had encountered the Rotrox I began to wonder what we had got into by teaming up with them and whether it was all worth it. I felt physically ill.
But what was I complaining about, I told myself? A mobster knows only one way of life and that is to find someone to intimidate, threaten and finally take a piece of. When we burst through to Earth we had gone ranging about like a torpedo, like parasites seeking a host or viruses seeking healthy gene machinery to take over and remake. We had found that host and it had worked for us, as Bec had always said it would: we had found the lever that moved vast forces in our favour. We were only doing what we had been doing all along, on a smaller scale, in Klittmann.
So what was bothering me?
Thirteen
The first thing I did on getting back to Rheatt, after reporting to Bec, was to go and see Palramara.
It had been a long time. The elevator took me up and I stepped into the once-familiar top room where she was waiting for me.
Rheattite women wear welclass="underline" she hadn’t changed much. “You wanted to see me,” she said, sitting down and staring at me calmly.
Up to that point my mind hadn’t been quite made up about whether to deliver Dalgo’s message complete. I decided then that she deserved not to be told any lies. At the same time I realised that I could be brutal if I wanted. A part of me would have liked to hurt her because of what had happened. But I had to recognise that it hadn’t been her fault: she had been a chattel, a spoil of war.
“I’ve been up on Merame,” I told her. “I saw your husband. He asked me to give you a message.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes?”
I hesitated. “Maybe I shouldn’t say it. He wanted me to tell you he was dead. For your sake.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “That would be like him. It is a long time now since they showed him to me. Is he…?”
“He’s all right,” I said quickly. “Rotrox prisons aren’t exactly pleasant places, but they leave him in peace now.”
I wanted to ask her if Bec still called on her, but the words wouldn’t come out. She rose and paced to the window, looking out blankly. Suddenly she turned, looking at me pleadingly.
“Couldn’t you help him? Couldn’t Becmath help him? He is on good terms with the Rotrox. They might release him for him.”
At that, I reflected, I could probably have tricked Imnitrin into sending Dalgo back to Rheatt with me. I could have told him I wanted him for myself. But I also knew that Bec would never stand for such a stunt.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Even if the Rotrox were willing — which they never will be — you’d never get Becmath to agree to it. You’ve tried, haven’t you?”
She made a hopeless gesture. “Yes, I’ve tried, but not for a long time.” She stood there, gazing at me sidelong, her eyes luminous. “How I hate that man! I don’t understand you, Klein. You are a strong man. You are a born leader. Yet with Becmath you are weak. Why do you follow him like a pet animal? Why do you not defy him? I cannot believe that you fear him.”
“There’s no mystery,” I said. “We both believe in the same things. That’s why I follow him.”
“He is evil, like the Rotrox.”
I shook my head. “He’s not evil,” I said defensively. “He’s a genius. Rheatt would be a lot worse off if it wasn’t for him.”