Ice Dragon

Chapter 20

The four men sitting around a table in the study of the Prime Minister's shooting lodge were all feeling rather short-tempered. For three of them it was an inconvenient place to be at an inconvenient time-but the P.M. was notably disinclined to interrupt a good grouse season for anything short of the Last Judgment. So Lord Leighton, J, and Richard Blade had trundled out to meet him. For two of them there was an additional strain in that Lord Leighton was being even more maddeningly stubborn than usual when he had started some particularly fascinating bare, and both J and the Prime Minister were doing their best to grab the scientist by the coattails and keep him from disappearing over the horizon with the whole Dimension X Project. And for Richard Blade, there were some personal pains, which Lord Leighton had touched on but for once had the tact not to pursue. Had he done his best to preserve the Menel?

At this moment, however, the Prime Minister was holding the floor, holding it so stubbornly that not even Lord Leighton's willingness to interrupt anybody for any reason was stopping him from getting his thoughts out. «Now damn it all, Leighton, this time you're asking for the moon. Not just the moon, but the moon in a bloody giftwrap as well! You've got to sit down and look at it from the point of view of keeping the Project going over the long term.»

«Yes,» put in J, «and from the point of view of keeping Richard alive and sane, which is also a trifle important for the project in the long run. It's simply preposterous to talk about canceling the search for other candidates in favor of this new whatever-you-call-it.»

«A Replication Module,» said Leighton shortly. «Obviously-«

«Obviously we have to consider all sides of the problem,» said the P.M., accomplishing simultaneously the considerable feat of getting his irritation under control and the positively prodigious one of successfully interrupting Lord Leighton. «Let's go through Leighton's request from the beginning.

«What you want, if I understand it correctly, is that the main effort of the project now be turned in the direction of first, determining the exact relationship between X Dimension and Home Dimension, and then modifying both the programming and the hardware of the computer so that we can send Blade to any given X Dimension in a controlled fashion, rather than simply firing him off into the blue the way we've been doing. Is that right so far?»

Leighton nodded but said nothing, apparently not recovered from the shock of being successfully interrupted. Oh well, thought Blade, there's a first time for everything, and a politician like the P.M. has had enough practice interrupting nonstop talkers to be able to cope with almost anybody if he wants to.

«Particularly, you want to send Blade back to the world he just came back from, to find out whether the-the Menel, I think you called them? — survived the destruction of the Ice Master's stronghold, and if they did, to help with the efforts of the local people to make contact with them. And then what?»

«That depends entirely on the attitude of the Menel,» said Leighton rather shortly. «Obviously there's no need to approach them hat in hand. But they are our superiors in technology by any number of centuries, and I can't imagine that either the Ice Master or Blade's attack left them with a terribly good impression of the human race in any dimension.»

Lord Leighton had once again put his finger squarely on the problem that had been churning in Blade's mind in the weeks since his return from the dimension of the Ice Dragons. Had he given the Menel the notion that human beings were dangerous, in spite of all his efforts to limit damage to them? In particular, had the destruction of the stronghold also involved the destruction of the Menel settlements? All of them, some of them, one of them? And if the destruction had been less than total, what would be the Menel's reaction? Would they consider the human race a menace, and resort to more direct means of clearing off the world they wanted to make their home-in short, had he signed the death warrant of both Graduki and Treduki by his destruction of the Ice Master, rather than saving them? Or possibly would they realize that this world was inhabited by other intelligent beings in great numbers, and that it would be both more civilized and more expedient to negotiate with these beings? He was so absorbed in questioning himself that he missed a good part of the Prime Minister's continuing explanation.

«-and on top of canceling all the other supporting projects such as the search for new candidates, you still say that the Replicator Project will require another million pounds for new personnel, new research, and new hardware. It may even require relocating the whole damned computer complex, and my estimate of that is another three million, plus the security risk. And on top of all this, you say the Replicator will take at least two years to develop if it can be developed at all, which you're not sure of yet!» The P.M. shook his head. «My answer has to be no.»

«But-«began Lord Leighton.

The P.M. held up a hand. «Definitely no. The Special Fund will barely come up with the extra million, and for anything beyond that I'll have to go for an addition to the research budget. And Parliament isn't terribly likely to sit still for three million pounds without asking some pointed questions-and the Official Secrets Act is like a red rag to a bull with some of the back-benchers. They'll demand to be shown at least privately what the money is going to do. And what can we show them?»

«We can hardly show them the Menel,» Leighton said calmly. «That would risk a global panic if the word got out.»

«Precisely,» said the P.M., beaming. «And what else can we show them that's as earth-shaking-or even really important? We're still trying to duplicate most of the things Blade has brought back-things like the teksin from Tharna and that electronic key he brought back from this one. We could step up the appropriations for that research effort-but again, more money! Apart from the things we can't show or which haven't produced any results yet, what else is there from the project? Blade deserves the Victoria Cross for each and every mission, and no doubt Parliament would petition the Sovereign to award it if they knew what he'd done-but I much doubt they'll be willing to underwrite the project further if Blade's V.C. is all it looks like producing.

«Besides,» he went on, «some damned fool would be bound to blab in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there's the project's security gone for a Burton! At the very least, we'd have the Americans demanding an arm and a leg and three toes off the remaining foot for sharing in the project. And we'd very probably have half the espionage people in the world camping on what they think is our doorstep. Including some from countries we'd like to stay on good terms with.»

He shook his head. «No, I don't think I can say yes to what you're asking. Not all of it. But I agree the discovery of the Menel is important enough that we should-«and he was off into outlining a compromise solution. Blade listened long enough to get the general outlines of it, and watch Lord Leighton's downcast expression-something prodigiously rare in itself-start to change to a more cheerful one, then excused himself and stepped out into the courtyard. The room was stiflingly hot from the fire, and he needed the damp chill air of the night to clear his head and lungs.

Lord Leighton had met a man who was more stubborn-or at least as stubborn-as he was, and a professional bargainer to boot. However, the scientist was going to salvage something from the collision-another million pounds from the Special Fund, with a portion of it earmarked for preliminary feasibility studies of the Replicator. If it turned out there was a real possibility of being able to control the computer sufficiently to permit Blade (or his successor) to pick an X Dimension the way a traveler at Paddington Station picks where he'll get off the train, then the P.M. would be open to a request for the full amount necessary. In return, Lord Leighton would keep everything else connected with the project going at at least its current level, and step up the pace in the search for new candidates.

Blade felt disappointed, but as his head cleared enough for him to think the matter over dispassionately, he had to confess that much of his wish for Lord Leighton to win out came from his own desire to get back and find out the answer to all the questions about the Menel that were tormenting him. It was a very personal desire, having nothing to do with the higher goals of the project, arising simply from his own doubts about whether or not he had bungled the job! It was also a completely unrealistic desire, considering that even Lord Leighton's most optimistic estimate for a working Replicator-assuming one could be built-was two years.

No, he would not be going back to the dimension of the Menel soon, and if he did not go back soon, it did not matter very much whether he went back at all, except to satisfy his curiosity. If the Menel survived (and his own guess was that their settlements, at least some of them, could have survived the blast), they would have established the pattern for their future relations with the humans on the world the two races shared long before Blade could return. Extermination? Possibly-if Blade were to return he might find nothing but the Menel and the ruins of the human cities and towns.

But suppose there were peace? Blade realized he had in a way been underestimating the abilities of his friends in that dimension. People like Stramod and Leyndt-yes, and Treduki like Nilando and Rena and the head of the Tengran council of elders-had all the intelligence, learning, and humanity needed to arrive at a peaceful settlement with the Menel, if one were possible. Anything that could be done, they would do. They wouldn't need him. He recalled what he himself had thought at the moment when the Ice Master had asked him to be his ally against the Menel-a man should do everything himself if possible. And the other side of that was that if it isn't possible, he should get the best help available. That he had done.

He reined his mind in sharply, with a rueful grin in the darkness. If he kept on woolgathering this way, he was going to develop a taste for philosophy. And while he knew he was a first-class adventurer, he also knew he would never make more than a fifteenth-rate philosopher.

He scraped the mud off his shoes with a stick and went back into the lodge.