King Of Zunga

CHAPTER ONE

«Blast,» said J, and dropped the sheaf of papers down on the desk in front of him. It took an effort for him not to throw them, down, or even throw them across the room.

From behind the broad, polished desk, Lord Leighton stared at J. The scientist was bent forward in the pose that made his hunchback and his polio-twisted frame most comfortable for him. His gnarled, knob-jointed hands were splayed out on the varnished desk top. It seemed to J that for a moment there was a fleeting look of sympathy on Lord Leighton's gnomelike face. But it vanished quickly, and was replaced by the man's usual professional detachment.

The scientist shrugged his humped shoulders and said quietly, «It's not my fault, old chap. Really it isn't.»

J sighed: «I know, damn it!» His dignified civil servant's face broke into a wry grin. «I suppose the one we could blame is Richard himself, if we wanted to.» That made even Lord Leighton smile, at the incongruity of the idea.

J leaned back in his chair and considered. Here in this office two hundred feet below the Tower of London sat two of the key men in Project Dimension X, the most important and most secret research project in England. Sometimes J wondered if they needed all the secrecy. Would the average man or even the average member of Parliament really believe in the project if he heard of it, let alone understand it? J wondered. He was a well-educated man and had been in secret intelligence work since World War I. He had often dealt in his work with things too fantastic to believe. But never with anything like Project Dimension X. Every so often, when his mind confronted some new part of the project, it more or less tried to go on strike. What would the man in the street say?

Project Dimension X involved, very simply, putting a man into alternate dimensions. Eleven different ones so far, but the number was doubtless nearly infinite. With Lord Leighton's computer linked to the man's brain, he would vanish from beneath the Tower-from Home Dimension. He would awaken-somewhere else-in Dimension X, always naked, usually with a splitting headache; and more often than not with a great need to both think and act fast to stay alive. The dimensions varied widely, and most of them sounded like a madman's ravings when put down on paper. But they all seemed to have one thing in common-they were all filled with deadly dangers.

The project revolved around four key men. Lord Leighton had developed the computer-a monster two or three generations beyond anything else believed possible in the rest of the world. The Prime Minister provided the money that the project gobbled up by the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and fought off indiscreet questions from curious M.P.s. J acted as liaison and field man for both the scientist and the politician, since he had more freedom of movement than either. And as head of the secret intelligence agency MI6, he had provided the fourth key man.

Richard Blade. Recruited by MI6 while still at Oxford, he had fulfilled his early promise ten times over. He had been MI6's best agent for the better part of twenty years, expert in both the thinking and the rough-and-tumble ends of the business. He had been the secret of many of the agency's most successful operations. He had, in fact, become virtually indispensable. J would have esteemed him highly even if Richard had not been so much like the son he had wanted.

But those same exceptional qualities of mind and body that had made Richard Blade a superlative field agent had also made him the perfect man to travel into Dimension X. Or perhaps not perfect, but so far the only man in the Free World able to travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. He was able to explore those Dimensions and bring back their science and technology to aid England. And more often than not, he managed to help the people in each Dimension cope with problems of their own. Richard was a natural leader. Set him down in the middle of a wilderness full of howling savages, and in a few months his wits and his muscles would have enabled him to rise to power. That had happened more than once out in Dimension X.

But Richard was not superhuman, and he was not invulnerable. There was always the risk of the pitcher going to the well once too often. Apart from the personal feelings he had for Blade, J knew that the whole Dimension X program would come to a standstill if Richard were ever killed, disabled, or lost. One other Englishman had made the trip into Dimension X, and even returned alive. But he now sat in a padded cell in an obscure corner of the North Counties, insane for life. Even without being killed, Blade might come to that. Not even Lord Leighton could do more than guess what the repeated jolts to Blade's brain from the computer might do in the way of permanent effects. Blade had already suffered problems with drinking and sex as a result of brain trauma. One of J's outstanding and continuing nightmares was that Blade would one day come back from Dimension X with that athlete's body of his intact. But there would be only the ruins of a mind behind those piercing blue eyes. J shuddered at the thought, hardened as he was to seeing his agents take risks.

So there was a search on for other candidates for Dimension X trips. The Prime Minister was searching England's pool of likely candidates, while J busied himself checking with the Americans. The search had been underway now for the better part of two years, both men doing their best. And that frustrating sheaf of papers that J had dropped on Leighton's desk was the only result.

J looked at Lord Leighton, half hoping that the scientist would say something to offer a way out of this dead end. «Do the graphs mean what I think they do?»

Leighton nodded. «We took Blade's qualities and set up a series of indicators. A hundred of them, each with a scale of zero to one. Then we graded all of the other possible candidates that you and the Prime Minister together had presented, using the same indicators. You've seen the results.»

J sighed wearily. «I know. Blade works out to 92.7 out of a possible 100. The next highest, an American Special Forces man assigned to the CIA, works out to 64.3.»

«And the doctors and psychiatrists have interpreted that to mean that he has virtually no chance of making a trip into Dimension X and coming back alive and sane,» said Leighton. «We did a rough application of these indicators to that poor fellow who did come back insane, and he worked out to 77.1. The guess right now is that nobody with much below an 85 is even worth trying out. It would be sheer murder to send them through the computer.»

J felt like using the kind of language he hadn't used in forty years. He had to take several deep breaths until the urge passed. Then he asked, «Are you sure that we've got a comparable amount of information on all the other men? After all, Richard's been examined more thoroughly than any other ten men in the world today, and by the best doctors and psychiatrists.»

«I thought of that,» replied Leighton. «But it doesn't matter. The difference between Blade and the others is too big for any lack of information to account for it. No, we just have to face the fact that Blade is the most nearly perfect human being known today.»

«Perhaps you should tell him that someday.»

Lord Leighton's white eyebrows went up. «How do you think he'd take it?»

J fixed the scientist with a cold stare. «Having known Richard for longer than you have, I would say he'd take it-like a gentleman.»

While Leighton and J sat and argued in the office far underground, the «most nearly perfect human being» was sitting in a taxi on his way to the Tower of London. He was cold, because the early autumn evening was unseasonably chilly. And he was impatient, because a proper London fog was moving in on the city and the poor visibility had slowed the taxi to a crawl. If the driver couldn't speed things up a bit, Blade was half inclined to get out and walk the rest of the way to the Tower.

He was tanned and in better condition than usual, if that were possible. This was the result of a month spent diving for Greek vases off Smyrna, varied with nights ashore in Turkish bars, sipping good raki and watching the belly dancers. And before that there had been a month at his Cornish cottage. That month had been just as pleasant but not quite as relaxing. A lovely and charming young German exchange student had kept him agreeably busy for a good part of that month. Two pleasant months, and now it was time to earn his next spell of leave.

He wondered where he would end up this time. The variety had already been so incredible that he wondered if Dimension X had anything left that could really surprise him. Of course landing in a polar ocean, or in the crater of an active volcano would be surprising. Very surprising. But he wouldn't live long enough in either case to appreciate the surprise. Or he might land in a dimension with no human inhabitants. That hadn't happened yet either. But that would not be terribly interesting. In fact his main survival problem in that case would be not dying of boredom before the computer brought him home.

He shrugged. He was trying to predict the unpredictable and measure the infinite. He would be dead or retired long before Dimension X ran out of surprises. In fact a thousand men could make regular trips into Dimension X for a century without exhausting its possibilities, or so Lord Leighton said. And that was something Blade rather liked. He knew he liked to be always on the move in search of something new. So here he was, involved in a project that handed him on a silver platter as much adventure and as much novelty as any human being could very well cope with. He was content. Not complacent or self-satisfied, but content. He knew he had out of life nearly everything he could reasonably ask.

The traffic began to break up just before Blade was going to climb out and walk, so he eventually climbed out of the taxi at the Tower of London as he had intended. He gave the driver an extra tip for fighting his way through the traffic and poor visibility and watched the taxi's lights shrink away and wink out in the fog. It was rolling in thicker and thicker now. Blade was frankly glad that he wasn't going to have to face a trip back in it tonight.

The Special Branch men assigned to the project handed him on with even more dour faces than usual. The fog and darkness seemed to be weighing heavily on them. Blade was glad when the door of the elevator closed, shutting out the dank chill of the evening and the silent watchdogs.

The elevator dropped the two hundred feet to the level of the computer complex in the usual few seconds, and the heavy bronze door slid open as noiselessly as ever. J was standing in the corridor to greet him. The old man's face lit up as Blade stepped forward, and they shook hands.

«You're looking remarkably fit, Richard.»

Blade briefly told of his last months' doings as they walked down the brightly lit corridor toward the computer room. At each door there was a slight delay as they stood still, to be scanned by electronic sentries that had their characteristics memorized down almost to the fingernail. Each time, the image they presented matched the sentry's memories of people permitted to come this way. Each time the door ahead swished open.

«Where's Lord Leighton?» asked Blade.

«Already down with the computer. You know how he is about that blasted machine. Always fussing over it like a cat with one kitten. He hardly lets the technicians even dust the consoles.»

Blade grinned. «Frankly, I don't mind that if it helps get me into Dimension X and back safely.» J nodded. That was an unanswerable argument.

Lord Leighton's sanctum lay deep inside the computer facilities, beyond several rooms filled with the auxiliary equipment needed for the project and the technicians and operators needed for that equipment. More and more incomprehensible pieces of electronic wizardry seemed to have been installed each time Blade passed through the rooms. Lord Leighton's fertile mind had generated all sorts of new ideas for increasing the computer's powers. Each of those ideas had in turn generated its own family of new gadgets. Blade wondered what was going to happen when there was no more room in the existing net of underground rooms. Excavate some more? How the Prime Minister would love getting the bill for that!

Then they stepped through the door into the main computer room. All around and above them the massive computer consoles loomed. Their gray crackled finish seemed to absorb light and make the cramped room even gloomier than it would have been otherwise. In the middle sat the glass-walled booth and on the rubber floor of the booth stood the chair where Blade would be sitting in a few minutes. He had never liked the look of that chair. With the booth, it looked more like a place for executing criminals than for carrying out major scientific experiments.

Lord Leighton was at the main control board when they entered, too engrossed in examining the dials and readouts to do more than give a brisk nod to Blade. A glance at the board told Blade that the main sequence was already underway. He had been around Lord Leighton's computers long enough to pick up some vague glimmerings of how they worked.

It was time to get ready. He went into the tiny dressing room and took off his clothes. The loincloth and the pot of black grease to prevent electrical burns were laid out waiting for him. When he was naked, he dipped both hands into the grease and smeared it over every inch of skin, from hairline to toenails. It neither smelled nor felt any better than usual. Admittedly he couldn't expect it to be perfumed, but did it have to smell like a cheap insecticide? Fortunately the grease never stayed on his body through a the transition into Dimension X. Unfortunately, neither did the loincloth. One of these days he was going to land in a public place, among a people who frowned on nudity, and spend his first few days in the new dimension in the local jail on a charge of indecent exposure.

Blade strode into the room and sat down in the chair. The seat and back of the chair were chilly against his bare skin. Lord Leighton abandoned the control panel to its own devices for a moment and came over to wire Blade into the computer, briskly attaching the forty-odd electrodes and their connecting wires. The electrodes had the form of polished metal cobra's heads. Blade looked as though he were being attacked by a monstrous swarm of tiny snakes.

Finally Leighton was finished and stepped back to the controls. J had already perched himself on the chair that Leighton had put out for him. From the expression on the older man's face, Blade realized that J was probably more nervous than he was. He grinned and raised a hand in salute as far as the wires would permit.

Then Leighton turned. Blade saw that the scientist's eyes were filled with very nearly the only excitement he ever permitted himself to show. «Are you ready, Richard?»

«Ready and eager, sir.» That was very nearly true. He felt fit and rested and hardly nervous at all. If anything, he was looking forward to the challenge that a new dimension would throw at him.

Leighton nodded, and pulled down on the red master switch.

Instantly smoke began to pour out of the consoles in great swirling yellow-brown clouds. For a moment Blade thought that the computer had finally blown up. Then as the smoke swirled around him and he took a sniff, he realized that the computer had him in its grip after all. He was sliding out of Home Dimension. Leighton and J and the computer consoles and then even the walls of the booth slowly vanished into the smoke. It seemed to be pouring up from below now, eddying and flowing as though unfelt puffs of wind were disturbing it.

Blade tried to raise his arms, found them unencumbered by wires. He now realized that the chair was gone, that he was sitting on a flat metallic surface.

He rose to his feet. As he did so, the smoke around him swirled away on all sides until he stood in the middle of a patch of clean air. Beneath his feet the surface showed pale blue with gold threads running through it.

He stepped forward, and the edges of the clear space in the smoke writhed and jerked as it tried to keep up with him. He moved slowly at first, one step at a time. Then bit by bit he increased his speed, as though there were a siren voice calling him somewhere ahead in the smoke. He had no will to do anything but keep moving steadily forward, now at a walk, now at a jog, now at a run. The clear space around him kept pace.

Then he felt the surface under his feet begin to change. First it stopped being smooth, as though there were a thin layer of mud on it. Then it was not quite so hard anymore-the mud seemed to be getting deeper. And then it unmistakably began to slope downward. At first it was a gentle slope, then it became steeper. Blade tried to slow down, to hold back, but found that he couldn't. He felt the surface under him turn liquid, then the angle of the slope increased still further, until it was almost vertical. He was falling, falling down in a waterfall of liquid, falling endlessly. The smoke stopped trying to stay clear of him and moved in on him again. As it touched his skin, he felt sensation leave him. As it swallowed him up entirely, it was like being swallowed up in a great black pit, without light or sound or sensation.