And that was how we came to be expelled from Klittmann.
Four
Outside the light is always a little dimmer than we keep it in Klittmann, but our eyes quickly grew accustomed to it. On that first day, however, we kept the sloop’s lights burning. The sun was sinking in the sky.
Day and night on Killibol go through a cycle of fifteen hours. When darkness fell Becmath kept on driving, seeing his way by means of headlights. Me, I settled down to sleep. When I woke the sun was up again and Bec was still driving. The alk was in the seat next to him, a map spread out on the dashboard. He was consulting a funny little instrument with a wavering needle.
Reeth handed me a slab of protein. I bit into it and enjoyed the fruity flavour. But it was soon gone and not much of a breakfast. While I ate I weighed up the bunch I was stuck with for good or ill.
Excluding Harmen and Tone the Taker, the four of us were part of the inner circle Becmath kept around him. There was Grale: flashy and boorish. He had a knack of being the first to move and of winding up with the biggest piece. I had a bad relationship with him. Then there was Hassmann, a big, bull-like type, not too bright but dependable if there wasn’t much thinking to be done. He was the kind who never questioned an order but got on with the job.
Brightest of the three was Reeth. I got along with him best. He was what I call a reasonable guy.
They were all slum-bred, hard, and they could be cruel. But they were capable, and if a thing could be done they could do it. All the more so because they were schooled in Becmath’s special kind of leadership and organisation. In a word, they were smart and knew a lot. In any tight spot they were the people I would choose to have with me. If there was any crack in this ruthless world where we could crawl, they were the guys to take advantage of it. The trouble was I didn’t believe there was a crack.
Coming to Bec, he was smarter than them all, smarter than anybody. Among normal men Bec was sharp like a knife. I don’t think any of us even felt resentful about his dragging us with him in his downfall. Big men make big mistakes.
I swallowed the last of the protein. “O.K.,” I heard Bec say to the alk, “we’ll keep going till we hit the river.”
At that moment he apparently saw something through the window because he swerved sharply and slowed down to a crawl.
My pulse quickened when I took a look. There was a girl out there, walking along alone. When she saw us she ran. Bec drew alongside her and we shouted out to her, calling her names. I could hear her panting as she tried to get away.
“It’s a nomad girl!” Bec said in excitement.
“Hey, pretty thing, you,” Grale called, pulling down a window. “Come on, don’t be coy.”
“Fetch her in, boys.” Bec pulled up to a stop.
A couple of the boys jumped out and grabbed her. They dragged her into the sloop and held her against the side panelling.
She glared at us hotly, defiantly. She wasn’t wearing much, just a tattered gown that left one leg and one breast bare. When she moved it showed even more. Nomad girls have no sense of modesty, so I’d heard.
“Hey, she’s good looking,” Bec gloated. “Now listen, girl, with you out here on your own, and on foot too, your people can’t be far away. Probably on the other side of that hill, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Let me take her in the back,” I urged, “I’ll screw it out of her.”
Bec chuckled, half frowning. “That wouldn’t scare a nomad girl. First things first, Klein, plenty of time for that later.”
Suddenly she spoke. “Yeah, over the hill. Just right over.”
“You’d better be telling me the truth, now.” Bec wiped his mouth, looking speculatively at the low ground on the mid-horizon. “Listen, honey, we’re going over the hill, and you’ll show me which are the protein vans. Get it? You won’t get hurt. If we grab one,” he explained unnecessarily, “we can eat for good.”
Motors whining, we crept up the hill, pausing on the crest. The girl pointed and giggled. “There!”
The nomad camp was down below sure enough. But we didn’t linger for long. There was too much of it. Great vans and prime movers scattered about in the dust. And they spotted us almost as soon as we emerged over the rise. There was a puff as a mortar shell came whizzing our way.
Bec heaved on the wheel and we roared frantically down towards the plain. I shook the girl by the shoulders. “Pretty girl, you’re taking a big risk by trying that on!”
“Well, boys,” Becmath said sombrely, “that’s what we can expect from nomad tribes, anybody big enough to have protein tanks. Banditry no good for us. O.K., we continue. We still got Plan A.”
This was the first I’d heard of Plan A, but at that moment I had other things stirring me besides the threat of starvation. I dragged the nomad girl to the back of the driving cabin.
“What’s your name, warm-belly?” I said, feeling her arms.
“Gelbore.”
“Well, Gelbore, you’ll never see your people again.”
She was scared and lost, but trying to put a good face on it.
“So who worries?” she said brashly. She leaned against me, pressing into me gently.
“Maybe we’ll starve. If so, you’ll starve.” Now I was fondling her uncovered breast. Perhaps it was the strangeness of the situation, but it made me feel dizzy, more dizzy than any woman ever had before.
Becmath spoke to me over his shoulder. “Don’t get ideas, Klein. That woman cuts down our rations.”
We were a good way from the nomad camp by now. Gelbore stared woefully out of the window, at the grey terrain and the receding hills.
“They’re shifting out soon! If you drop me off I’ll not walk back in time!”
“You’re asking for favours. We haven’t even got time to stop when we throw you off.”
If you hit the ground at seventy miles per hour, I reckon your chances are something less than hopeful. Gelbore went limp in my arms when she heard this death sentence. Her head drooped.
“Hell, what difference does it make?” I objected. “If we die, we die, having her along won’t change anything. Pity to waste her now we got her.”
He was silent for some moments. Then he sighed, and shrugged. “You win. Stop worrying, little girl. For the time being anyway.”
I took her back, past the motor housings, the magazine lockers, into the store hold. “It was me who fixed things for you,” I murmured. She muttered words I didn’t hear.
I stripped her robe off and it was really good, my hips grinding against hers. When it was over I found myself gazing at her face. For the first time I saw Gelbore as a person.
Becmath never seemed to need sleep. He insisted on driving the sloop himself most of the time, day and night. He would hand the wheel to myself, Reeth or Grale for a while, but four or five hours later he would be back and carry on sometimes for a twenty-hour stretch.
I was wondering what Tone would do when he ran out of pop. He had a store of it in the box he never let out of his sight, but it couldn’t last for ever. Every so often he’d disappear into the back to give himself a shot. We never mentioned it, except Grale who used to taunt him sometimes.
It wasn’t long before we all lost patience with Bec’s silence. We wanted answers. Maybe we’d kept silence this far because of a hidden fear that there weren’t any answers, that Bec had no ideas.
But life in the sloop was monotonous and we were starting to quarrel. More and more often Bec had to intervene to quieten us down. Eventually Reeth retorted: “Listen, boss, we want to know where we’re going.”