Empire Of Blood

Chapter 2

The massive bronze doors in front of Blade slid smoothly open with a faint hiss. He was now two hundred feet below the Tower of London, in the secret complex that housed so much of Project Dimension X.

A familiar corridor stretched out in front of Blade, empty, echoing, and sterile. It was all concrete and polished tile and dull shades of paint. The only sign of life in it was the man walking toward Blade, the man called J. Blade stepped forward to meet him. They shook hands. J's grip was as firm as ever. Like so much else about the man, it did not change.

There were supposed to be photographs in existence that showed J as a young man. Blade had never seen them, nor had anyone else who was willing to admit it. For all the years he'd known. J, the man had looked like a thoroughly respectable senior civil servant, urbane, quiet, flawlessly tailored, a gray man who moved through life without making waves or attracting much attention. Over those years J's face gained a few more wrinkles and his hair showed more white and less gray. That was all.

Appearances were more than usually deceiving in this case. Behind J's modest exterior lay the brains, talent, and experience of one of the greatest of all spymasters. Every sensible man who had been in the same line of work over the last forty years either respected or feared him, and sometimes both. J was also a comfortable and agreeable man to work for, a quality lacking in many other brilliant people in the great game of espionage. His friendship helped make Blade's lonely and complicated life more endurable.

«Ah, Richard,» said J, when they'd finished shaking hands. «I must say, your beard suits you. I'm glad that beards are coming back into respectability. It simplifies at least one of our problems.»

Blade sighed. «I'm glad you like it. I can't say I share your enthusiasm. It used to be that when I came back from Dimension X with a beard, shaving it off made me feel back home again. Now I'm going to have to carry this blasted chin spinach around everywhere.»

«I know,» said J. «But you know the situation.»

Blade nodded. «I do. Unless it's improved over the past couple of weeks?» he added hopefully.

J shook his head. «We're still exactly where we were the last time I talked to you about it.»

«In other words, stalemate?»

«That's about it,» said J. He turned and they began the long walk down the corridor to the computer rooms at the far end.

The «situation» bothering both J and Blade would have been ludicrous under other circumstances. It all began on a stormy night just before Blade's last trip into Dimension X, when Blade was taking a train into London. The train was wrecked, with fifteen people killed and more than fifty injured.

Blade was unhurt. He promptly went to work, using all his strength and skill to help the others in the wreck. His swift rescue work and first-aid measures saved at least a dozen lives.

Blade realized that being a hero would put him squarely in the middle of a blaze of publicity, making him conspicuous and possibly endangering the security of Project Dimension X. So he slipped quietly off into the stormy night just before the police and rescue teams arrived on the scene.

Enter the Chief Constable of the county, to hear about the mystery hero who had saved so many lives and then vanished. He immediately took it into his head that the man had disappeared because he was a wanted criminal! The Chief Constable had a composite drawing of the mystery hero prepared and took all the other steps necessary to launch a full-scale search. As Blade sailed off into Dimension X, Scotland Yard was being alerted to comb Britain for him!

At this point good luck and J both entered the picture, just in time to keep things from getting completely out of hand. Even a dozen witnesses together could not produce a recognizable picture of Richard Blade, seen briefly on a cold, dark night. What Scotland Yard and the newspapers and BBC put into circulation was a picture of Blade that his own mother wouldn't have recognized.

J also went to work. MI6 had well-established routines for quietly blocking or sidetracking Scotland Yard in emergencies. In J's opinion this was an emergency. The public uproar might eventually threaten Project Dimension X. Even if things didn't go that far, it would certainly become difficult or impossible for Richard Blade to live a normal life in Britain. That thought made J see red.

Even Blade never learned the details of all that J did. Whatever was done, it was enough. Blade did not have to dispose of his apartment and all his possessions, assume a complete new identity, and live under cover in his own country. On J's recommendation, he kept the beard he'd grown on his last trip to Dimension X. He also took extra precautions to keep people from trailing him. Apart from that, he could live at least as normal a life as he had before the whole business of the mystery hero exploded in his face.

«Eventually I suspect that interest will fade out entirely,» said J. «Then you can take off the beard and go back to normal. I could speed up the process, of course. But it would be a gamble.»

«Politics?» said Blade.

«Quite. We'd need direct intervention by the Prime Minister. That would be bound to attract attention in certain places that have a nasty habit of leaking things to the press. There could easily be a public scandal about the sinister plottings of security people. The Prime Minister's in no mood to risk something like that now.»

«I can hardly blame him,» said Blade. «Besides, it would mean the hunt would be on again. As things stand now, it's dying down. We'll just have to wait it out.»

«True,» said J. «Although I must say that for once I'm rather glad that your job keeps you beyond the reach of Scotland Yard most of the time. It makes this sort of thing a dashed sight simpler to handle.»

They were now approaching the door to the computer rooms. They stopped briefly while electronic monitors scanned, identified, and approved them. Then the doors opened and they passed on.

The ever-increasing mass of equipment in the first few rooms was a familiar sight to both men. They passed swiftly onward from room to room with hardly a glance to either side. They only stopped when they came to the massive door of the main computer room. Beyond that door was Lord Leighton's private sanctum, with the huge computer, the product of his genius and the heart of Project Dimension X.

Blade had seen the main computer as often as he had the supporting equipment in the outer rooms. Unlike the supporting equipment, the main computer remained interesting, even awe-inspiring. It was monstrous-ranks of towering consoles with gray, crackled finishes, rising almost to the rock ceiling of the room.

Its creator was already on the spot, as he usually was. Lord Leighton came bustling out of the shadows as Blade and J entered. In spite of a hunchback, polio-twisted legs, and eighty-odd years, he moved with surprising speed and agility, wiping his hands on his filthy lab coat as he came.

«Greetings, gentlemen, greetings.» There was little age or feebleness to be heard in his voice. «We can proceed any time Richard is ready.» He looked at the attach case Blade was carrying. «You have the knife?»

«I do. I also brought the sheath and a belt I've had for some time.»

«Very good. I fear I cannot report much progress in our research into the matter of the ring. What about you?» he said with a glance at J.

«Nothing worth your time or mine to discuss at the moment,» said J. «I'm afraid I've been rather heavily committed in this blasted 'mystery hero' affair.»

«I quite understand,» said Leighton. «Very well, Richard. If you would care to change, I will see about activating the main sequence.»

Blade nodded and headed toward a small door in one wall, taking the attache case with him. Inside it was a commando knife he'd carried on a good many field missions over the years, along with its sheath and a belt he'd owned since he left Oxford. They all showed signs of wear and age, but the knife was as lethal as ever and the leather as tough. They had been good friends to him in Home Dimension. Perhaps they would survive to be equally good friends in Dimension X.

«Perhaps» was as far as Blade would go. The whole business of how to get something beside his own naked body from Home Dimension into Dimension X was still very much guesswork. All the hard data they had came from the transportation of one single solitary ring. It was being examined by every known method with a few techniques being made up on the spot. The examination had as yet revealed nothing.

Meanwhile, there was the theory that something Blade had owned, used, or carried for a while might have a better chance of making the trip. Lord Leighton normally hated relying on guesswork, but he made an exception for Project Dimension X. He was too good a scientist not to recognize the limitations of his own knowledge, and he did not want to see Blade endangered unnecessarily. Lord Leighton might have a computer instead of a heart where most people were concerned, but not with Blade or J.

The end result was that this time Blade would be hurled off into Dimension X with something that might help him stay alive there. That was good news, by any standard.

The routine in the changing room had been the same ever since the project began. Blade stripped naked, smeared himself all over with smelly black grease to prevent electrical burns, and pulled on a small loincloth.

Next Blade opened the attache case. The knife was already in its sheath. Blade drew it out and watched the play of light on the steel, then sheathed it again. He hooked the sheath to the belt, strapped the whole belt around his waist and drew it tight. Finally he stepped out into the main room again and headed toward the glass-walled booth in the center. Around him the lights on the consoles and control panels were already flickering and dancing in the familiar patterns of the main sequence.

Blade sat down in the metal-framed chair inside the booth. The black rubber of the back and seat were chill and clammy against his bare skin. After a little shifting about, he found that he could sit naturally, in almost his usual position, even wearing the belt and knife. Good. The fewer variations from the routine on any one trip, the better. He remembered his trip through two different dimensions, when everything seemed to be going wrong or at least becoming gruesomely unpredictable. He didn't want that to happen again.

Lord Leighton took a final look at the main board and turned away with a satisfied expression. Even by his exacting standards, everything was going smoothly. He could leave his computer to its own devices for at least a few minutes and wire Blade up.

«Wiring up» was another routine that hadn't changed in a long time. Lord Leighton worked with the speed and agility of a monkey, attaching cobra-headed metal electrodes to every part of Blade's skin. From the electrodes colored wires ran off into the bowels of the computer consoles. When the job was done, Blade and the computer were a single unit, ready to be activated whenever Lord Leighton pulled the master switch.

Lord Leighton chose to wait a few moments, his eyes scanning the controls. J was perched in his usual place, on the small fold-out spectator seat on the wall by the main controls. On his face was the sober expression he usually wore as the time approached for Blade's leap into the unknown. In those moments J could cease to be an urbane, poised gentleman. He could openly show the concern he felt as someone he cared about headed into danger.

Seconds ticked past, turning into minutes. If Blade hadn't known better, he would have suspected Lord Leighton of prolonging the suspense for dramatic effect. Lord Leighton had been known to do that elsewhere. He'd never done it down here at this time and never would.

Suddenly Lord Leighton's right arm shot out and the fingers of his right hand closed on the red master switch. Lord Leighton's aged and misshapen body seemed to take on a grace that it never had at any other moment. The master switch slid down its slot and reached the bottom.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Blade's senses twisted in the computer's grip, and the world around him dissolved.

The floor gaped open, the walls split apart, the ceiling fell in. From some unimaginable outside a greenness swirled and boiled and roared into the room. It was not a liquid, a solid, or a gas. It was a color from some place where the laws governing nature were like nothing that Blade had ever met in Home Dimension or Dimension X.

The greenness poured down on Blade like a waterfall, rose up around him like lava bubbling up out of a volcano, roared past him like a river with a noise like an express train. The computer's consoles and controls, Lord Leighton, J and his seat-all vanished.

There was nothing around Blade now except the greenness, the color that behaved like a liquid, a gas, a solid, and many things that were none of these and should not have existed in any sane or healthy universe. The more Blade saw, the less he liked it. The less he liked what he saw, the more a chilling thought battered at his mind. Had his luck finally run out? Had some malfunction of the computer, some error of judgment by Lord Leighton, even the effects of the knife and belt, brought him to the end of his road? Was he going to live out the rest of his life in some nightmarish nowhere between the dimensions?

It was possible. It always had been possible. His mind had never recoiled from that possibility into raw panic. It did not do so now. Grimly Blade fought his way back to a disciplined awareness of what seemed to be going on around him.

The greenness was now turning steadily into a liquid, a rushing torrent of liquid that was hot and cold at the same time. It chilled parts of Blade's body, scalded others, filled his nostrils with fumes that had no odor and yet choked him, stabbed at his joints and groin with piercing daggers of icy cold, tormented him in a hundred ways. It carried him along as it did so, as if it wished to prolong the torment. It carried him on at a steadily increasing speed, until he felt that he was being whirled along like a log through rapids in flood.

Blade wondered when the rapids would sweep him over the falls to be smashed to pieces on the rocks at the bottom.