Empire of Two Worlds

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The sun was not bright for us that day we fled from Klittmann City, riding at seventy miles per hour across the grey stone plain.

Behind us Klittmann filled the landscape, a stupendous grey castle quarried and raised out of the cold rock terrain.

I had been out in the open only once before, so the scene was a great novelty to me and despite the weirdness of our situation I took time to examine it from this new, unnatural angle.

Seen from the outside Klittmann scarcely had the appearance of an artificial construct at all. It was a vast pile, a rough-hewn mountain. A titanic mass of rock that had risen from the ground in some natural catastrophe, breaking out in slabs, blocks, gullies and canyons, ramp-like slides and roofs. It was all roughened and lumpy, and excess building materials spilled down the sides in frozen avalanches.

Which was as it would be. To the inhabitants of Klittmann the external wall was incidental, unconscious. No windows or doors except the one ground-level portal which was almost never opened. The city was completely internalised. When there was any rebuilding or extension the work was done from the inside; nobody ever visualised the exterior.

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