Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 2

The elevator door slid silently open, and Richard Blade stepped out into the corridor beyond it. He was two hundred feet below the Tower of London, in the overgrowing complex that housed most of Project Dimension X. At the end of that corridor stood Lord Leighton's computer. In less than half an hour that computer would be hammering its complex pulses into Blade's brain, twisting his perceptions so that for him reality itself would also be twisted.

When it untwisted itself again, he would be seeing Dimension X.

Blade strode down the apparently empty corridor, listening to the echo of his footsteps from the tile floors and the whir of machinery behind metal doors. There was no sound from the all-seeing, unsleeping electronic sentinels that kept watch on every inch of the corridor.

He found that he felt his usual mixture of tension and anticipation as the time of his next journey came closer. It was impossible for even a man as used to danger as Blade to ignore the fact that each trip was a leap into the unknown. So far there was no way of controlling or even predicting where he would land. The one thing that was certain was that Richard Blade was the only living man who could return from Dimension X both alive and sane.

One day, from one dimension, Richard Blade would not return to England. His body would lie in the soil of an unimaginably distant land. The project itself would come to a grinding halt until they found someone else equally tough. Lord Leighton would curse the delay and the Prime Minister would curse the loss of a man valuable to England. The head of MI6, the aging spymaster known as J, would mourn Blade as he would have mourned the son he never had.

But Blade was also palled with anticipation. If each dimension had unknown dangers, it also held unknown adventures, challenges, opportunities. He could and did live the way he could live best-by his own wits, his own skills, his own strength. He did not have to worry about women who wanted stay-at-home husbands. He could say what he wanted, to whom he wanted, as he had to, without any damned Official Secrets Act mucking up the works! He was a free man in Dimension X, and that was good for him and often for the people he traveled among. Everywhere he went, Blade left marks of his passage. More often than not what he left behind was better than what had been there before.

J once referred to that sort of thing as «interdimensional social work.» But the old man wasn't nearly as cynical as he sounded. That was just a mannerism, picked up during too many years of sending men to their deaths and playing deadly games. J had seen too much to really sneer at anything or anyone that helped make any world a little less grim and harsh for even a few people.

As though Blade's thoughts had conjured him out of the floor. J appeared in the corridor ahead.

«Hello, Richard.»

«Good morning, sir. Lord Leighton on schedule?»

«Have you ever known him not to be?»

Blade shook his head and laughed. Lord Leighton was one of the greatest scientific minds alive, and also one of the greatest curmudgeons. All the skill he refused to use in getting along with his fellow human beings he put into getting along with computers. So computers that drove other men mad with frustration worked flawlessly for him.

The two men walked side by side down to the first of the computer rooms. Usually Lord Leighton came out to meet them at this point. But there was nobody in the room except two technicians in white coats, seated in steel swivel chairs and monitoring the visual readouts on a bank of consoles.

One of them turned in his chair as the two men entered. «Lord Leighton says he's using a new variant on the main sequence. It doesn't allow as much time as before, so you're going to have to hurry.»

J raised an eyebrow and exchanged looks with Blade. In both their minds was the thought, «The old bugger might have told us in advance.» But when Lord Leighton got a technical bee in his balding bonnet, there was no power on earth that could halt or delay him.

They practically trotted up to the door of the main room. Lord Leighton was waiting for them there, scurrying back and forth on his polio-twisted legs, rubbing his hands together. With his hunchback under his white coat, he looked like an overworked gnome.

«Ah, very good,» he said briskly as the two men came up. «The new sequence is underway and I'd rather not interrupt it. So if Richard can be in the chair within-oh, five minutes-it will make life simpler for all of us.»

J fixed Lord Leighton with a singularly chilly stare. «It might have made life simpler for us if you'd told us beforehand. We could have been here earlier.»

«Oh, quite, quite. But-«

Blade knew that he would never have time to listen to the argument and still be in the chair on time. He nodded politely to both men and darted into the chamber.

In the little changing booth in one corner, he stripped to the skin. Then he smeared himself with greasy, foul-smelling cream for protection against electrical burns and knotted a loincloth around his waist. By the time he stepped out into the chamber again, Lord Leighton was already standing by the black metal chair in its glass cubicle.

Blade sat down in the chair and began breathing slowly and deeply, trying to relax as much as possible. As usual at this point, he didn't find it easy. Meanwhile, Lord Leighton scurried about again, fastening cobra-headed metal electrodes to every conceivable and inconceivable part of Blade's body. From the electrodes masses of wires trailed off into the bowels of the computer. By the time the scientist was finished, Blade looked and felt like a part of the computer himself.

«There,» said Lord Leighton, stepping back. Usually he stopped at this point to make a final visual inspection. This time he trotted straight over to the main controls. He also drew a grimy, crumpled handkerchief from his coat pocket and mopped his bald forehead.

Blade grinned. Lord Leighton, the mighty scientific intellect, was more nervous than he was! Yet it was he who would be risking life and limb in no more than a few minutes.

But it was worth it. He had felt it at the church after the christening of Zoe's child, and he felt it even more strongly now. Life in Home Dimension was too bloody complicated, sometimes. In Dimension X it was more often than not a very simple matter of survival.

In Dimension X there had also been women Blade had loved as deeply as Zoe. He had left at least two of them carrying his children. There was Princess Aumara in Zunga. Probably Queen Aumara now, raising their child to rule after her over the warriors of Zunga.

There was also Zulekia, the red-haired Maiduke woman of Tharn. She too had been carrying his child when the computer had snatched him back from Tharn. But he had been there long enough to do much of what needed to be done. He had smashed the decadence that had gripped Tharn for centuries and opened a future for it. He wondered how they were coming along in their struggle toward that future. Those who had survived the great battle with the Pethcines and the destruction of Urcit would be Lord Leighton's hand came down on the master switch. Blade saw it too late to relax, to compose his mind, or ever to clear his musings about Tharn out of it. Zulekia's high-browed golden face with its mass of red-gold hair floated before his eyes as the switch snapped downward.

It still hung there as Lord Leighton, the computer, the whole gloomy chamber snapped out of existence in a single moment. There was no light or sound, no sense of heat or cold. Blade was alone in a lightless, soundless, senseless void, motionless, speechless. Nothing registered on his senses except Zulekia's face in front of him.

Then the face flared brightly, the gold hues of her skin turning luminous. It rose to incandescence, flickered, and was gone. The void was all around Blade, and a chill of utter loneliness entered his bones. In a single moment all awareness left him.