Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Twenty-One

The foam-flecked water leaped up at them out of the mist. It seemed to lash every inch of Blade's skin with burning-cold whips as it swallowed him. He plunged deep, so deep that there was darkness around him even when he opened his eyes. Then the rocks of the river bottom swept up out of the darkness at him. Blade stretched out both arms, caught himself on his hands, and pushed away from the bottom. As he pushed, the current caught him and swept him up and away.

He had to struggle up toward the light and the surface. At each moment he became more certain his lungs would explode before he made it. Then his head broke surface. He sucked in a great gasping breath of air, nearly strangled as a wave broke over him, then started swimming furiously. The river roared in his ears and rocks seemed to be rushing past at the speed of an express train. But he did not go under again.

Blade was several hundred yards downstream before he spotted Katerina's soaked blond head rising on the crest of a wave. He signalled to her, narrowly missed being cut in two by a razor-edged spire of rock, then saw her wave back. She was swimming strongly, and he began stroking his way toward her as fast as the river would let him.

Time after time Blade would swim ten feet toward Katerina, then a sudden surge of water would carry him twenty feet back. Once he skidded over a large rock on his chest and belly, scraping himself painfully, then he plunged safely into the water beyond. He was almost within speaking distance of her when the river suddenly dropped ten feet straight down. They both went under, deep into the dark pool at the base of the drop. Blade broke surface first, wondered if Katerina had survived, then saw her rise almost beside him. She had half a dozen minor wounds from the battle with the Gudki, and she was bleeding from a cut along the jaw. Otherwise she seemed unhurt, and was swimming strongly as the current took them again and swept them out of the pool on down the river.

The next stretch of rapids was less wild than the first. Blade had time to look along the banks, searching for a place to climb out. They were certainly miles downstream from the Gudki now. They were probably beyond the farthest point the scouts had reached in exploring the river bank. The roaring river was sweeping them away into the unknown.

The river was less savage here, but the banks were even more inhospitable. They rose in walls of fissured, seamed rock, a hundred feet or more straight up to craggy skylines. High above, Blade saw patches of blue sky through the swirling mist. Once he saw the fleeting silhouette of a bird. Otherwise they seemed to be passing through a lifeless land, with nothing around them but cold water and bare rock. The current was still too fast to let them reach for handholds, and how would they climb the cliffs even if they somehow got out of the water? There was nothing to do except ride the river down through the canyon and hope for the best.

Blade began to lose track of time in the water. He had to fight to be aware of Katerina as she swam along beside him. He had to fight to be aware of rocks and whirlpools ahead. He had to fight to be aware of anything except the roar of the water in his ears and the bitter chill that slowly worked its way up his arms and legs.

They would have to get out of this water soon. Otherwise the cold would become the ally of the current. Too numb to swim, they would be swept under or smashed and mangled against the rocks. Blade forced himself to look ahead and to either side, hoping for some break in the walls of the canyon. He saw nothing-no ledges, no handholds, nothing but looming faces of gray rock that a monkey couldn't have climbed.

More time passed, and the current began to speed up again. Waves heaved them up and down now, foam-crested waves that rose ten or fifteen feet up the walls of the canyon. Blade found that his arms and legs would no longer move exactly where he wanted them or as fast as he wanted them to. The roar of the water rose again until a bomb could have gone off unheard. Blade could not hope to make Katerina hear a single word, but he could see her face clearly, only a few feet away. Her skin was as pale as a fish's belly, and her hair trailed like seaweed behind her. Her face was set and strained, eyes half-closed. Cold and exhaustion were creeping up on her, too.

In Kano, he and Arllona had escaped from death by fire. Now, here in the land of the Ganthi, it looked as though he and Katerina might very well die by water.

Far below the Tower of London, J sat on the little folding seat and watched Lord Leighton readying the computer. In another few moments the sequence would begin for returning Blade from Dimension X. J's eyes shifted from the computer and its master to the chair in its glass booth. In another few minutes after that Blade should materialize in the chair, or at least near it. Then J could breathe more easily, at least until the time came for Blade to be hurled off into the unknown again.

An idea struck J. He turned it over and over in his mind until he thought he could put it into words without its sounding like a joke. Lord Leighton would be in no mood to appreciate jokes now.

«Leighton,» he said. «What about Katerina?»

The scientist turned and his bushy white eyebrows rose inquiringly. «Could you be more precise, please?»

«Have you considered the possibility of her being returned to Home Dimension along with Blade?»

Leighton looked severe. «Of course.» His tone implied that it was at least mildly insulting to even imply that he hadn't considered this and a host of even less likely possibilities. «I think that's a rather low-order probability. To be sure of bringing two people back from Dimension X, we would need two separate Recall Modules. Each one would have to be programmed with the brain pattern of the individual being recalled. I doubt if the expense of a second Recall Module would be justified unless and until we have a second person out in Dimension X whom we want to bring back.»

J suppressed a grin. This was the first time he could recall in the whole history of Project Dimension X that Leighton had been opposed to spending money on the computer.

«In point of fact,» Leighton went on, «it's not theoretically impossible for the computer to affect Katerina, assuming she's still alive and sane.»

«A rather large assumption,» put in J.

«True. But if her brain is functioning, it will be more susceptible to Recall than any other brain in Dimension X except Blade's. If the Recall pattern coincides with a receptive pattern in her brain, we may at least haul her out of the Dimension where she is now.»

J nodded, but his mind was leaping ahead to a disturbing possibility. «Is there any danger to Blade in that?»

Leighton cocked his head on one side as he considered his answer. «There's always the chance of unexpected results when the pattern of Recall varies from the norm. I wouldn't care to predict whether or not these results could mean danger to Blade.» Then, seeing J's grim look, he added more cheerfully, «If I had to-ah, guess-I would say no.»

«Thank you.» J was genuinely grateful. He knew what an effort of will it took for the scientist to make a guess, and then to admit it.

Leighton turned back to the main control panel. «Ah-very good. The sequence is running smoothly.» He looked up at the timer clock above the panel. The second hand was sweeping up around the dial, toward the vertical.

It reached the vertical. A green light flashed on over the red master switch. Leighton's hand closed on the switch, then slammed it down to the bottom of its slot.

There was a thump and a crash that echoed around the chamber and made the floor heave. There was an enormous sizzling sound, like a thousand eggs dropped all at once onto a hot grill. J smelled smoke, and by pure reflex he threw himself flat on the floor.

Then all the lights went out.

The pain began so gently this time that Blade at first thought it was just an earache from the cold water. It faded away almost entirely after the first pulse. Then it returned, strong, sharp, and unmistakable. The computer was reaching out to grip his mind; now was the moment to see if he could make it grip Katerina's as well.

He lunged through the water at her as the pain swelled. He reached out and grabbed her by one hand. As he did, she screamed out loud and turned her face toward him. Her eyes were closed and her mouth twisted in pain. She gasped and moaned, «My head-it hurts-I-«

Blade burst out in a shout of surprise and delight. The computer was reaching Katerina too, gripping her brain without any help from him, ready to drag her back! He still reached out to her, putting an arm across her shoulders and turning her around. She screamed again and clutched wildly at him. Her arms went around him and her nails dug into his skin. She was forgetting the river, the current, the rocks-everything except the pain in her head.

A moment later the explosion came in Blade's own skull. He felt his vision going, felt the coldness and the pressure of the water against his skin fading, threw his own arms around Katerina, It seemed to him that they were now sweeping upward to the brink of a great black cliff, the mist boiling around them, blue and green and red light sparking and flashing all around.

They almost reached the top of the cliff. As Blade reached out for the black rock, the light flared around them again and they began to fall. He felt Katerina slipping away from him, clutched her more tightly than before, felt her warmth against him. Wrapped around each other as closely as they had ever been in their lovemaking, Blade and Katerina fell down through the mists and the flashing lights.

In the darkness of the computer room, J rose to his feet. He took a step forward, felt something roll out from under his foot, and fell sprawling. He groped around for what had tumbled him, got a grip on it, and laughed. It was exactly what the situation called for-the emergency hand torch, thrown down from its bracket by the explosion. J switched on the light and stood up again.

He wouldn't have been surprised to see the computer a mass of smoking wreckage, with Leighton's charred corpse tangled among blackened wires and twisted metal. He was relieved to see that whatever had happened hadn't done that. The air in the room was faintly hazed with smoke, and all the lights on the consoles were out. Everything else looked the same as before, including Lord Leighton.

The scientist was sitting on the floor, shaking his head and looking slightly dazed. As the light fell on him he blinked and tried to get to his feet. J stepped over and helped him rise. Leighton brushed himself off and the two men exchanged looks.

«What the devil happened?» asked J.

Leighton looked toward the chair in its booth. «We don't seem to have either Blade or Katerina back at the moment. Otherwise, I'd rather defer an answer until we have more data.»

J did not much care for that answer. In plain language, it meant that Lord Leighton didn't have the remotest notion of what had happened, or very much hope of finding out any time soon.

As Blade came awake, the first thing he felt was the warm weight of Katerina on him. That didn't surprise him. They'd been swept out of Dimension X locked in each other's arms, so there was no reason why they shouldn't have landed back in Home Dimension the same way.

Except-he felt short, damp grass against his bare skin. A deep roaring sounded in his ears. Blade opened his eyes and saw overhead a dark, star-spangled sky-and to one side, a great, raw, pulsing orange glow.

Blade tried to rise and found that Katerina was only half-conscious and weighing him down. Gently he rolled her off onto the grass that shouldn't have been there and lurched to his feet. His head whirled with pain and dizziness. For a moment he wasn't sure he could control his legs or his stomach. Then his head and vision cleared.

He took one look around him, and now his head whirled with surprise. What he saw should have been impossible. But it was true. So he wouldn't waste time denying it or doubting it.

He and Katerina had not returned to Home Dimension. Somehow they'd been caught up by the computer, whirled through the unknown that lay between Dimensions, and dropped back in Kano! Kano, the city of black jade and the Consecrated, the city of the Mouth of the Gods where he and Arllona had been about to burn, the city under siege by the Raufi of the desert. Kano, where he had been a prisoner condemned to sacrifice in the Mouth of the Gods. He could not be far from the Mouth either, not with that orange glow in the sky.

Blade took another look. He certainly wasn't far from the Mouth of the Gods! He was standing behind the First Consecrated's viewing stand, less than a hundred yards from the flames. What was even worse, he recognized the two tall, lean figures silhouetted against the glow on top of the stand.

They were Tyan, the First Consecrated, and Mirdon, the Commander Tyan had chosen to watch Blade's death with him.

Blade shook his head. This seemed even more impossible than what had already happened. Yet it was just as undeniably true. He had not only returned to Kano' he had returned to Kano at the very time and place of his own sacrifice!