Monster Of The Maze

Chapter 2

Lord Leighton was not pleased with Blade's decision. He sat hunched sideways in his chair and stared at the younger man with yellow eyes, looking every bit the hunchbacked and evil-tempered little gnome he was. Lord L was very old and very famous and quite properly considered himself the foremost cybernetic genius of his time.

«It is not nearly time,» he complained. «We've only just implanted the crystal. Your hair hasn't even grown in yet.»

«Damn my hair,» said Blade. «I want to get on with it. Otherwise I might not go at all. I might funk it.»

J had been sitting quietly in a corner, sucking on his pipe and listening and watching, rather enjoying himself. Enjoying Lord L's discomfiture. J had noticed that in himself of late-more and more he had come to dislike Lord L, and all scientists, and he had struggled against it and lost.

Now he said, «Funk it, Richard? Not you. You never funked anything in your life, much less a mission of this importance.»

«I might this one,» said Blade. He smiled at J. Theirs was very nearly a father-and-son relationship. Blade was fond of the older man even though they were opposite types and the generation gap was great. J was dry as dust, Establishment to the core, something of a fussy old woman in dress and manner-and as much a genius as Lord L in his own line of work. He was a security man, head of MI6 and also of MI6A, the special security branch created for Project DX. He did his job superbly and hated it. As he spoke again he found himself almost wishing that Blade would funk it, would drop out and refuse the upcoming mission. They had a new man on tap, a trainee, and though he was no Richard Blade he would do.

Lord Leighton said: «Look, my boy. You don't really understand the problems. The telemetry is working, and the laser microprogramming is coming along, but there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done on the encephalographic code. And that is the crux of the whole matter! What we have just done, directing your route this afternoon by computer impulses, is primitive compared to what I hope to do. I tell you, Richard, the possibilities are limitless. There is literally no end-«

«And that,» said J dryly and with some malice, «is just the trouble. There never is any end to it, Lord L. There never will be, if you have your way. In any case, I'm sure that Dick has his reasons for wanting to start the mission now»

They were in the office suite far below the Tower of London. All three men were at present living there. J had given up his comfortable quarters on Half Moon Street and Blade had closed his flat in Kensington. His Lordship, though he owned a house in Prince's Gate, had to all intents and purposes lived under the Tower since the missions into Dimension X began. It was J's private opinion that Lord L would have slept with his precious computers if possible.

They were waiting for his answer. Lord L left his chair and shuffled about, looking frail and with his hump grotesque beneath his smock. Blade recognized the implicit appeal and steeled himself-he had seen it all before: Lord L representing himself as an old man, an aging genius about to die, a poor old fellow with a polio-wracked body who must be granted this last favor. Let things be done his way, just this last time.

J also recognized the gambit and his smile was icy. He nodded to Blade. «Speak up, Dick. You have never complained before, or tried to interfere in any way. You have obeyed orders, kept your mouth shut and performed splendidly. Surely you must have your reasons now. We're listening.»

The trouble was that Blade could not put his finger on it, really could not explain the feeling, the hunch or intuition, or whatever you wanted to call it, that had swept over him so suddenly when he leaped into the taxi. One moment it had not been there. The next moment it was. The urge to go, to begin the mission. It was almost as though the computer itself, working through the crystal in his brain, had spoken to him.

Blade did the best he could. «It is a feeling I have,» he told them. «A strong, an overpowering feeling, that I should go now. I can't name it and I won't try, but it's there. I think I had better obey it.»

Lord L snorted and said something vulgar. He was given to bad language when thwarted.

J nodded and smiled and said, «If you feel that strongly about it, my dear boy, by all means I think you should go. As soon as you like. I see no drawbacks, no reason for delay. The Prime Minister need not be consulted, though he will have to be informed after the fact. So I think-«

«Who gives a bloody good goddamn about the Prime Minister!»

Lord L hobbled around and around his desk. His thin white hair floated atop his pink skull and his leonine eyes had a baleful gleam. He pointed a graphite-stained finger at J.

«You know what you can bloody well do with the PM! It is my experiment I'm concerned with. This is our last chance, damn it. You know that, J. After this mission they will cut off our funds, and that will be the end of Project DX. It's a shame, a crime, a criminal waste and worse stupidity, but that is what they will do.»

J crossed his tweedy knees, blew on his pipe and gave the old man an insincere smile. «Maybe not. Not if we bring back some treasure this time.»

Lord L clenched a gnarled fist and shook it at the ceiling. «Treasure shit. Those fools can only think in terms of material things-gold, platinum, gems, uranium! Stupid pots that can't see beyond their noses. Project DX is treasure, damn it. The greatest discovery ever made by man. DX makes the moon landings look like a row on the Thames. We send a man into new dimensions, into dimensions that people do not even know exist, cannot conceive of existing, and we get him back safely. Five times we have done this, and those misbegotten bastards want to close us down because we aren't showing a profit. Suppose the Americans had thought so-they would never have landed on the moon!»

«A nation of shopkeepers,» J said smugly. «Profit or we don't play.» He began to ream his pipe. The worst was over. Lord L had forgotten his immediate displeasure with Blade, and with J, and had taken off on the powers that be. The thing was-and J, even loathing the X missions as he did, had to admit it-that the old man was right.

The outburst was over. Lord L went back to his desk and slid into his chair like an old crab, easing his hump.

Blade said: «About being out there five times, Lord L–I am the man who has done it and it has been my intuition, my hunches, if you please, that have kept me alive more often than not. I have survived all those various hells because I have followed my instincts. I think I had better follow my instinct now.»

The old man was making scribbles on onion-skin paper. He did not look up. «Very well. If you are so determined-it is your life, Richard, and you know best how to safeguard it. And, no matter what J thinks, your safety has always been my chief concern. It was, in fact, my main reason for implanting the crystal in your brain-so the machine could tap your stream of consciousness and, by means of the encephalographic code, give me a printout of your thoughts at the very instant they were occurring. I would know, Richard, exactly what you were thinking every moment. I would be aware of every situation in which you found yourself. In times of great danger I might be able to help by reversing the process and feeding my thoughts to you through the machine. Two heads are often better than one, Richard. It might save your life.»

Both Blade and J recognized the last appeal. The old man did not give up easily.

Richard Blade went to a chair, sat down quietly and did not speak for a few minutes. He had given much of himself to the DX experiments and he had not shirked duty. His body was still intact, but for the myriad scars, and he was not mad. Yet his brain was not the same and never would be again. Each time the computer altered his brains cells, restructuring them so he could perceive and exist in a new dimension, new deviation from the norm took place. The machine never restored the cellular configuration to exactly what it had been. The Blade who sat in this room now, thinking these thoughts, was as different from the Blade who had undertaken Mission No. I as the puling infant Blade was different from the grown man who had graduated Oxford and gone straight into MI6. No help for it. But there was a law of averages. Once more to the brink and let that be an end to it. He did not particularly fear the physical dangers, the battles he fought, the monsters he faced, the sexual exhaustion at times forced on him. He feared that his brain would be destroyed. He feared death, yes, but that was a secondary fear. Lord L and J. . they could not dream of what it was like out there. He could not tell them. Words did not do the job. It was like war. You had to undergo it personally to know what it was like.

And there was this urge, this hunch or intuition, telling him to go now.

He tried to tell them. He spoke briefly and saw, after a few moments, that even J did not understand. Lord L sulked and only half listened.

Blade faced them. «So if you like, sir, I am refusing to obey an order.» This to Lord L. «I go tonight, sir, or I do not go at all. You do have a backup man, after all, and maybe it would be better if-«

Lord Leighton suddenly looked like a peevish child. He waved a pencil and said, «Come now, my boy. Nobody said anything about orders or any of that rot. Forget that. It is just that I am a scientist and I distrust intuition. But have it your way, by all means. I will make the setting on the machine-it may take me an hour or so before the cycle is right and then we will go. By all means.»

The old man hobbled out of the room, mumbling to himself even as he fussed with a slide rule.

J had his pipe going at last. He peered at Blade through blue smoke. «You are feeling all right, my dear boy?»

Blade shrugged his massive shoulders. «Never better. In the pink. I really can't explain any of this, sir, except that somehow I know it is better to go now. Other than that I suppose it is just another DX mission. Routine. I am sorry to upset Lord L's schedule, but it is the way I feel and-«

J nodded. «You do as you damn well think best, boy. Don't let that bloody old boffin get to you. He really can't help it, you know. He doesn't mean to be insensitive or inhuman-he just is! He is a scientist, not really a person.»

Blade had to chuckle. «Oh, come now, J. He really isn't all that bad.»

J very seldom used bad language. Now he said, «The hell he isn't. But as I say-he can't help it. Well, lad, this is the last time out.»

«I hope so,» Blade said. «I sincerely hope so, sir.»

And he did. He had had quite enough. Yet he knew that if there was a reason for more ventures, if duty called him, if his country needed him, he would go. He did not foresee the possibility, and never had he more devoutly wished that a circumstance would not arise. He had had it up to his neck with Dimension X. He knew now what a bomber pilot must feel like before embarking on his last mission before going home.

J, his pipe steaming, had picked up a ruler and was tapping it on his palm. «You've been worried about your mind, eh?»

«A little, sir.»

J would never understand that, either. The nightmare of black sweat and screaming, the pitiless alcoholism, the raging drive of satyriasis, the double and triple vision and loss of memory, the old friends offended and the girls lost because he could not explain. The Official Secrets Act that bound him like a net.

And the blackouts, the terrible and frightening blackouts. He had wakened once in Liverpool with some doxy by his side and absolutely no recollection of the events of the week before. True, he had sought help and it had been given by J and Lord L and the most famous specialists in England-but it was not enough. There were times when a million famous doctors could not have helped him.

J said, «Lord L has always assured me that the machine restructures the brain cells, but it does not cause them to deteriorate.»

«I know.»

And he did know. He trusted and admired Lord L. And yet he did not really believe.

Lord L hobbled back into the office and waggled a finger at Blade. «I have the cycle upcoming on the machine. Half an hour. You had better get ready. Unless-you've changed your mind?»

«No,» said Blade.

J came to shake hands. «I don't believe I'll go with you to the computer room this time, my dear boy. Not in person, at least. But I will be-well, you know.»

«Of course, sir.»

They shook hands. «Bless and keep,» said J.

Lord L glanced at his wristwatch. «Best get a move on, lad. If we miss the cycle it will be a lost twenty-four hours. And since you're so dead set on going now. .»

Blade grinned. The old man died hard. «I am,» he said. «Let's go.»

As Blade followed Lord L through the maze of corridors and past the various security checks into the computer complex, he conceived the weird fantasy that Lord L was not really Lord L at all, but a white-smocked Apollyon leading him into the Pit. Which might well be. You never knew, until you had gone through the computer and landed in Dimension X, whether it was to be hell or paradise. In most cases it was a bit of both. Which this time, and in what proportions?

They passed the final security check and walked amidst the smaller computers, heading for the room that housed the monster machine that would launch Blade. All around him the lesser brood hummed and clicked and flashed and rang bells and made complex decisions in a billionth of a second. The big man felt his usual antipathy taking over; he did not like computers and no use pretending he did. Now and then, when they passed a white-smocked figure in attendance, a human being in charge of all these electronic brains, Blade felt a small positive charge of relief. The machine had not entirely taken over. Not yet.

At last they came to the central room that housed the master computer. Lord L did what he had never done before: he followed Blade into the little disrobing cubicle. The old man talked as Blade stripped and donned a loincloth and began to smear himself with the tar salve that prevented computer burns.

Blade took off his toupee and flung it into a corner. His naked skull glistened blue in the fluorescent light. The toupee looked like some small dead animal; it would serve, Blade thought, as a reminder to take care of his hair when he returned from the mission. If he did.

It came hard for Lord Leighton to beg, but he was near it now.

«I wanted this word alone with you, Richard, away from J. He is against me in everything these days. And he treats you like a child, you know. He is like a mother hen with a chick. That's all wrong, Richard. You're the dominant one, the hero, the adventurer. It is you who must go into DX and suffer whatever comes. So all final decisions should be yours.»

Blade smeared tar salve on his bottom. «Exactly, Sir. I agree. I do. I am-making the final decisions.»

Was there ever such an obdurate old boffin?

«If you would only wait for a month, Richard? Surely that isn't asking too much and I, er, have so much to do yet.»

Blade shook his head. «No. I also have things to do, sir. I want to get into Dimension X and get it over with. Now.»

«You don't understand,» said Lord L. «None of you really understands what I am trying to do.» There was real despair in his voice. «The computer-cortex link, my boy, is only the first step in what I am trying to do, what I can do. Even Dimension X is of secondary importance compared to what I am really after. I want to change the world, Richard! I want to change people and so the world. But I need time and I haven't much. I am an old man and my sands are running out.»

Blade rubbed tar salve between his toes. The old boy was never so dangerous as when he waxed dramatic and turned to florid usage. In self-defense Blade was flip.

«I'm sorry, sir, but there is nothing I can do about your sands. Shall we get on with it?»

Lord L glanced at his wrist. «Another ten minutes. I had thought, Richard, to implant another electrode in your brain. In the hypothalamic region. As a part of the new ESB experiments I am undertaking. It would not take very long and if we delay-«

«No,» Blade said. For the first time he began to understand what the old man was really up to. The computer-cortex experiments had evolved into something new, something of such a magnitude and importance that Lord L had all but forgotten DX. He was trying to phase one experiment out and leap headlong into a new one. And he needed Blade, for of all the men alive in the world only Blade had a brain already geared to receive and react to computer signals.

Lord Leighton was afraid-afraid that Blade would not come back from this mission and that he, Lord L, would have to start all over again with a new subject. Blade knew then that his understudy, the trainee whom he had never met, had not proved out. Something had gone wrong.

«Hear me,» said Lord L. «I foresee the day, Richard, when this earth can be a paradise. Because men can make it that way. They can do that because they will be able to control their own mental functions. It will be a psychocivilization and as near to perfection as we dare not dream today. Each man will carry his own computer, no larger than a hearing aid, and by means of it will control his thoughts and his passions. It is complex, Richard, and there is no time for detail now, but believe me-I can rid the world of evil, Richard! I can. I know I can. Given time and money and the proper personnel.»

Blade was ready to go. His huge brawny body glistened with tar salve. He gave the old scientist a smile and said, «Quite apart from all you've said, sir, and the fact that if you can do what you say you can there will be, sooner or later, a brain dictator, I am not very interested. Now-do we go through with it or do I resign and get dressed again?»

Lord L stepped aside and let Blade precede him through the door. He said nothing.

As Blade took the last few steps into the computer launch chamber, the words of Sir Charles Sherrington echoed in his brain. The brain that Sir Charles had been describing when he called it «an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern.»

Yes. It was all of that. The thought only hardened Blade's resolve. After this time no more tampering. Fini. Kaput. All over.

The small glass cage stood as always, containing the chair with its straps and electrodes. Blade hesitated for just a moment, then strode over to the chair and sat down. Lord L began to tape the shiny-headed electrodes to his greased body. The old man worked silently and intently, frowning and mumbling to himself, the usual bandinage missing. Once, as he taped an electrode to Blade's naked skull, Lord L did pat his shoulder. I am not forgiven, Blade thought, but he is a professional and it is business as usual.

The preparations went on. Blade felt himself going rigid and tense, though he willed against it, and the queasy liquid of fear began to seep through him. There was no way to dam the fear, to hold it back-not in these latter days-and so he let it flow. It would vanish soon enough when he went through the computer and found himself in a new dimension fighting for his life. It always came to that. It was never easy.

Blade stared at the instrument panel on the far wall, concentrating on the red toggle that, in a minute or so now, Lord L would pull and so catapult Blade into-what?

Lord L taped the last electrode into place and went to the instrument board. His hand hovered over the red toggle.

«A final chance, Richard. Won't you consider-wait a month or so-or perhaps we can scrub your mission altogether and let your backup man do this mission?»

Blade's nerves were screaming. He knew that if he hesitated he would be screaming. The battery of his courage, sapped cumulatively by so many trips into DX, was running low.

«Pull the lever,» he said. «Pull the lever, you damned old fool!»

He had only time to read the amazement and shock on Lord L's face before the red toggle came down. No one had ever spoken to his Lordship in that manner.

The current washed through him like bloody surf. For a moment there was pain, pain that could not be borne and yet must be, and then his body vanished and with it the pain and he was only a brain on a stalk..

The stalk was planted in purple gravel and atop it his brain waved and moved in a hot wind. Lights flashed and bells rang and behind a shadow screen he saw horned figures copulating. A clown ran up from nowhere and smote his raw brain with a bladder and there was more pain. The clown and the pain locked hands and danced off into silver fog. A girl with fur all over her came out of the fog and stood looking at him. She sucked her thumb and stared at him and mouthed words that he could not understand. As his brain watched she grew a penis, a huge pole of flesh, and laughed and began to toy with herself and then went off turning cartwheels.

His brain detached itself from the stalk and began to rise like a balloon into polychromatic clouds wreathed around the base of a gigantic chryselephantine statue. The statue was hermaphroditic and towered into eternity and filled the cosmos and the brain knew that it was seeing GOD.

GOD smiled. GOD smote. The brain fell and fell and fell ….