In that year, too, I rose quickly in Bec’s organisation and became his lieutenant. Not all of his inner circle appreciated my rapid advancement, but most of them had sense to see that a special relationship was growing between me and Bec, so they accepted it. Only Grale, the Nasty-Face who had wanted to put a bullet in my back at Klamer’s, hated my guts for it.
Already I could see that Becmath’s ambitions were beginning to look beyond the Basement. After the police raid he told me to design and start building the sloop, like the ones the police had but bigger and better. Plainly he thought that at some time in the future he might have to face them on equal terms.
One day I went into his office to find him smoking weed and brooding. “Sit down, Klein,” he said. “There’s something I want to talk over.”
He often used me to sharpen his ideas on. I took a tube from the box on the table and lit up.
“You know,” he said, “it’s not only in the Basement they got gangsters. They got gangsters upstairs too.”
“What, you mean some of those government bosses?”
He waved his hand. “Them too, but that’s not what I meant. There are private interests, private empires just like we got down here. Only they can throw their weight around with no sweat. Because the basis of real power lies upstairs, and they’ve got it.
“You know what I mean, Klein,” he added, staring at me with his steady black eyes. “I mean the tanks.”
“You certainly can’t do much unless you can eat,” I muttered.
“That’s right. Have you ever wondered about something, Klein? Have you ever wondered why nothing ever changes in Klittmann? Why we do everything in the same way we did it generations ago?”
His remark puzzled me. I shrugged. “Why, no. What other way is there?”
“That’s right, what other way.” For some moments he sat gazing at the nerve-calming smoke that plumed up from the end of the tube he was holding. “You know, it was centuries ago, maybe a thousand years ago, that men came from Earth and settled on Killibol. They came at the peak of an age of science and technology. An age of great change.”
“I didn’t know that.” To tell the truth I had difficulty even in comprehending it.
“Few do. But as soon as the cities rose and the gateway from Earth was closed, something happened. Everything petrified, even technology and engineering, and we finished up with what we got today — stasis. There isn’t systematic knowledge any more, only habitual techniques handed down from generation to generation. I’ve got a theory as to why that happened. Firstly, the need for food comes before everything else. The tanks are a stranglehold that stops people from altering anything — especially since they are more or less in the hands of a few and the others are beholden to those few. You can’t think about anything if in thinking about it you endanger your protein supply. Secondly, the fact that Killibol is a dead world causes each city to bunch up in itself and prevents traffic between them. It wasn’t like that on Earth. There was food everywhere and the cities all had intercourse with one another all the time. It must have been real lively. Maybe you need that intercourse between cities to get things moving.”
“How do you know all this, Bec?”
“I’ve read books.” He picked up an ancient, dog-eared volume that was lying on the table. “There’s a guy comes down into the Basement looking for pop. Tone, they call him: Tone the Taker. He’s quite a strange fellow. He knows a place where he gets all these old books and I make him bring them in exchange for pop.”
Slowly Bec got to his feet and put the book away in a cupboard. “Wouldn’t it be a fine thing, Klein, if people could be freed of their slavery to the tanks?”
“That’s impossible.”
“So it is. But maybe the stasis would be broken if the tanks didn’t have bosses — that’s where the real stranglehold lies. Supposing Klittmann was ruled by a rod of iron, by a real strong king or dictator, like they had on Earth thousands of years ago, and the tanks were made available to all. State property, like they were supposed to be when Klittmann was founded? Maybe we could even move in on some of the other cities.”
“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about, boss?” While I could just barely get the drift of what he was saying, I didn’t at that time see what it had to do with me.
He cast me a sardonic glance and I sensed he was disappointed in me.
“No. We’ve taken over the Basement, but we’re not going to stop with the Basement. Those big shots upstairs aren’t so big once you take their protein tanks away. Klein, we need a tank.”
His words practically stopped my mind. I saw for the first time that Bec’s theorising came to a practical point. But it seemed such an enormous step that I just couldn’t encompass it.
“Bec — how?” I goggled.
“You see?” he retorted with a grimace. “You can’t even imagine it. You think of yourself as tankless, as a gunman living outside the law. But what is the law? It’s a gun, it’s a mob, just like us. Once we’ve got what they’ve got, we can take the whole damned city.”
“You sure talk big.”
“Somebody round here has to. Now listen, you want to know how we’ll do it. It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. Is the sloop ready?”
“Yes.” I had, in fact, tried out the new vehicle a few days before.
“Good, we’ll need it. There’s a guy called Blind Bissey. He owns a tank, just one, located secretly in one of the quiet quarters on the level just above us. Because of it he’s able to run a few factories, have a staff around him, trade, live in style, things like that.”
Bec’s arguments were beginning to impress me. “Hell, isn’t that just what we do?”
“That’s right. Tone the Taker knows where the tank is. As a matter of fact, it’s right close by his store of old books. That’s another reason why I want to go up there. Here’s what we’ll do. One night we’ll drive up there by a planned route — and take over the tank.” He raised his eyebrows as he spoke the last words. “Simple.”
My head was singing with the audacity of it all. “We’ll never get away with it!”
“Why not? If it looks like we can’t hold the place we’ll round up the technicians and bring them down here, and take as much organic material from the tanks as we can and bring that down here as well. That’s all you need, remember: organic material and know-how. We’ll set the tank up anew in the Basement. Meanwhile I’ll get in touch with Blind Bissey and offer him a partnership.”
“It’s war,” I said with a feeling of foreboding. “We’ll be smashed into the ground.”
“You think so? Where’s Bissey without his tank? He’ll want it back so bad he’ll give me fifty per cent to get it. He’ll even call off the cops to get it. I tell you, basically he’s a mobster like us. So Bissey’s outfit will be our first step on the way to real influence. Once we’re upstairs we’ll start to edge in on the workers’ unions, take over more tanks, form alliances in the government and even the cops. Given time, there won’t be anybody who can stop us.”
“You seem to have it all worked out,” I admitted.
He smiled. “I’ve read a lot of books, Klein. Some of the people who lived ages ago were pretty smart.”
The sloop purred smoothly along the gleaming metal street, taking the regular right curves with barely a whisper. Behind us followed three smaller cars to complement the gunmen who were crammed into the big vehicle.
The district was quiet, almost deathly. On either side of the broad avenue the structures presented a continuous façade that swept up to join perfectly with the roof overhead, dully visible behind the glare of the street lights. Bec had had the route reconnoitred pretty thoroughly; we knew there would be no police patrols along at this hour and we were reckoning on a smooth operation.