“You did the right thing. Is it armed up and everything?”
“Yes. Ready to go.”
“Put extra rations in. All we’ve got.”
“Rations? What for?”
“Do what I tell you,” Bec snapped. “Doesn’t anything get through to you? After today our supply of everything is cut off.”
Reeth went away to arrange things. Grale was still hovering around, nervous but tough.
“We’re taking the sloop and making a break for it,” Bec told him. “Just eight or nine of us. Tell the rest of the guys they’d better filter out through the back way while they can.”
“Hell, why?” Grale said with a grin. “Let them klugs take what’s coming. They’ll help draw fire from us.”
Bec gave him a hard look that meant business and then turned to me. “We’re taking the alchemist with us. Come and help me persuade him.”
The laboratory was reached by a stairway in the corner of the garage where the sloop was kept. Reeth and a couple of others were throwing protein packs in its storage space as we went past. I admired its long black torpedo shape one last time, then we were clattering down the stairs.
Harmen seemed to be only vaguely aware of the events that were going on above his head. Usually he had half a dozen different experiments going, but this time there was only one. He sat at a table, making adjustments on a panel of dials. In the centre of the table was a big globular discharge tube — though he called them retorts, not discharge tubes — with at least half a dozen necks growing from it at the end of each of which was an electrode. Actually as I looked closer the retort was not globular at all, but was made up of a number of different cavities fitted together. Every few seconds the electrodes discharged in a rapid sequence with a loud shuuush and the globe flamed up. In the centre something was writhing and running through a spectrum of colours.
For a few moments we were captivated by the sight and didn’t speak. With each shuuuush the writhing gas in the retort seemed to be taking a more definite shape. Then, for several fleeting seconds, it took on the firm, tiny form of a human being. The body was a gay reddish colour. It was bedecked in multi-coloured garments and it looked up at us, its arms spread towards us appealingly.
A shuddering gasp escaped me. Then the minuscule thing dissolved again into a writhing, formless cloud of colour. Harmen turned to us with a smile.
“Merely a phantom, I’m afraid. But my first step towards the creation of the Androgyne. It is possible, by means of a recipe now lost, to grow real flesh and blood homunculi that are no bigger than what you have just seen. However, they require special environments and so cannot be let out of their glass bottles.”
“Don’t say that in front of Klein, you’ll make him nervous,” Bec warned him. “I’ve got bad news for you, Harmen.” Briefly he explained the situation.
“It always comes to this,” the alk said regretfully, pursing his lips. “Among the original migrants who came to Killibol were a large number of American and German gangsters. It is the only tradition that has survived all these centuries. Yet to leave all this….” He indicated the workroom with an expansive wave of his arm.
Suddenly Bec’s tone became urgent and he glanced at me worriedly as he spoke. “Remember what we were talking about the other day?” he said to Harmen. “You know — the location?”
“Yes?” Harmen’s eyebrows rose.
“Well, bring whatever instruments would be useful. And maps.”
“You intend…?”
“No,” Bec replied hurriedly. “It’s just that we have to have all options open.”
All this was mystifying to me, but I took no notice. I was too conscious of what was going on overhead. Harmen rooted around and filled our arms with apparatus. Himself he just carried a few books and scrolls.
The garage was all but deserted. Bec’s gang had all fled except the few he had detailed to man the sloop. We piled in and took our places. Bec ordered Harmen to hide in the storage hold.
We piled into the main garage where the lid was thumping and shaking under the impact of Hacker shells. It had held up pretty well; but now it was disintegrating. In places we could see the light coming in from outside.
“Right, just hold it,” Bec said. “Let’s hope she’ll still move.”
He got out of the sloop and made for the lid switch. At that moment there was a cry from behind us. Tone the Taker came staggering out of a doorway, clutching a box to his chest.
“Take me with you!” he yelled desperately. “Don’t leave me here!”
Bec shrugged and gestured with his thumb for Tone to board. Then he pulled the switch. There was a heavy whine of motors.
The lid was beginning to lift when he scrambled back breathlessly into the driving seat. The sloop surged forward, straight for the mass of steel and concrete.
Our acceleration, of course was terrific. The lid grumbled up then stuck with just enough clearance. In what seemed like the blink of an eyelid we were in the forecourt and among the cops.
They sure were surprised by our appearance. They didn’t know about the sloop, and it was better than anything they had. Our big Hacker guns barked destruction as we raced past. Then we were streaking down the main thoroughfare, heading for the Southside ramp and the First Level Ring Road.
At that point I began wondering what Bec’s destination was, where he intended to go and what he intended to do. Our only asset was the sloop; apart from that we were at the end of the road.
We made an entire circuit of the Ring Road at high speed, occasionally knocking aside other vehicles by sheer momentum, before the cops latched on to us again.
An explosion rocked the sloop. Bec wheeled us about, sped off the Ring Road into a narrower street where we were less exposed. Three cop-ships were on our tail.
I have to say this for Bec, his driving was terrific. I never knew the cops had as many sloops as they turned on us that day. We accounted for four, I think. Bec threw us up and down streets almost too narrow for us to go, and his judgment never faltered.
But the cops were cute too. They were edging us towards where they wanted us to go: the rim of the city. I know now that Bec accepted this with a kind of resignation; he had nowhere else to go.
Smoke was filling the inside of the sloop from all the firing we had been doing. The sloop slowed down, the motors idling. Suddenly I realised with a start that we were on the edge of a great empty concourse which ended in a great locked valve-like portal thirty feet in diameter.
We were near Klittmann’s one and only exit.
Four or five police vehicles were parked in a ragged line some hundreds of feet away, keeping a respectful distance. To my surprise a cop stepped out and put a loud-hailer to his mouth.
His words floated towards us, faint and distorted.
“This city doesn’t want you, Becmath. There’s no place for you here….”
Now the sloop had stopped. We all looked at Becmath, wondering what was happening. Then our eyes left him. Something was happening. The great lid of the exit valve was sliding smoothly up. Through the gaping circle we could see landscape — outside: dim, grey, cold.
The initial glimpse of that is an unforgettable experience to a Killibol city-man. For an Earthman, it would be like looking down a vast gaping chasm that has no bottom.
“You knew,” I said accusingly to Bec. “You knew all the time.”
“No!” Grale shouted. “Fight it out! Go down fighting!”
I don’t think Bec heard either of us. A shell exploded nearby. He put the sloop in motion. We gathered speed, heading inexorably for the portal. Had the cops herded us here, I wondered, or had Bec lured them here? We lunged over the slight rise in the ground and sped through the great circle. Out. Into the dimness. The cold. The bare, dead rock.