Pearl Of Patmos

CHAPTER 2

J had asked Blade to stop in at Copra House. It was from this antique structure, on Bart Lane near Thread needle Street, that J ran the affairs of M16A. Here he had a suite of dingy cubicles that were offices only in a symbolic sense. J, as Blade entered, appeared to be his placid, pipe-smoking, tweedy self. Upper-class, understated, civil servant.

Blade knew better. J had aged considerably since the computer experiments began. J was nervous at times now, where BTG-Before The Computer-J had had ice water for blood. Blade could understand. His own nerves were not what they had been.

J greeted Blade with a casual wave of his pipe toward a chair. «Good morning, Richard. You are looking extremely fit.»

Blade shrugged his big shoulders. «I am. I should be. I awoke this morning to blackbirds singing and honeysuckle on the vine. Pippa passing and all that rot.»

J sucked on his pipe and gave Blade a meditative look. «Methinks the lad doth protest too much. To be direct, Richard, I don't think you're too happy about going into Dimension X again.»

Blade grinned at the older man. «I'll level with you, sir, as the Yanks put it. I could pass this cup. Not that I will, naturally. It's my job. I'll do it.»

J nodded as he knocked pipe ash into his palm, spilling it on his vest. «Of course, my boy. Of course you will. But it needn't be forever, you know. That is, er, rather why I asked you to stop past before you go to the Tower.»

Blade left his chair and wandered to one of the grimy windows. He looked down into Lothbury Street. A newsboy was standing in a doorway, out of the rushing city throng, holding his placard on high. Blade read the large black letters without much comprehension: LADY DIANA DUCKS DAVID

Blade smiled at the labored alliteration and turned back into the room. He was far from a snob, but the truth was that he had never read the News of The World in his life. A lively paper, and not too fastidious about the truth. Yet as he faced J again he could not help wondering who the unfortunate David was, and why Lady Diana had ducked him.

«I think you have a right to know,» said J, «that Lord L and I are trying to find a replacement for you. It is not easy, I assure you. His Lordship has been running cards through his computers like mad. So far he hasn't come up with anything much. We do have, er, some likely candidates. About twenty odd who measure up in a superficial sense, at least. Out of the lot there may be one who will measure up. If we have the luck.»

Blade slouched back into his chair and crossed an ankle over a knee. He smiled at J. «Going to sack me, eh? Work not up to snuff? You think I'm past it?»

For a moment J thought he was serious. He began, «My dear fellow. You know better than-«He stopped, gave Blade a reproachful look, then continued, «I am perfectly serious, Richard. Absolutely. The pitcher can go to the well too often and that mustn't happen. In any case it is only good sense, good science and good technology. The Americans, for instance, are very careful about overdoing it with their space people. One trip to the moon is usually the limit, two at the most. Strain, nervous tension, even fear-and we all have that-these things can be cumulative and they take a toll.',»

Blade regarded his chief with wry amusement. «You don't have to sell me, sir. I've been out there six times and I am ready to quit. As of now. Would you like me to write out my resignation?»

J looked miserable. «I only wish it were as easy as that, Richard. It isn't, of course. Lord L is waiting for you now.»

Blade stood up, his sinewy bulk making the room appear even smaller than it was. His dark hair nearly touched the ceiling. He winked at J.

«Then why are we wasting time here? Let's get on with it, sir. Who knows-this might be an easy one.»

It would not be, of course. As always there would be death and terror lurking out there in Dimension X.

They left Copra House by a side entrance and came into Lothbury Street. The newsboy was still placarding his black headline. Blade nodded toward the man and said, «Who in the hell do you suppose David is?» It was in the nature of a rhetorical question. J was the last man to be au courant with London's various subcultures.

J surprised him. He glanced at the placard and then smiled at Blade. «You're rather out of things down in Dorset, I see.»

«True. I like it that way. And if I did have.a paper brought to the cottage it wouldn't be News of The world.

J raised a finger to a taxi. It ignored them. J joined Blade again on the curb. «You mustn't be smug, Richard. Admittedly the paper is an abomination, a penny dreadful, but it does have a certain zest and life to it. Vulgar, yes, but alive.» J made a prim mouth. «There are moments when I think the Times could do with a little vulgarity.»

Blade did not hear him, not really. He was staring across the busy street at the newsboy. LADY DIANA DUCKS DAVID The newsboy was holding up a paper, quarter folded, and Blade could see that there was a picture, a three column `cut,' beneath the screaming headline. The photo was of a woman, but even Blade's eyes could not make out details at that distance.

J signaled another taxi and was again ignored. Blade crossed the street and bought a paper, giving the man a shilling and not staying for his change. He recrossed to where J stared in surprise, glancing at the picture as he nimbly dodged a lorry.

It was she. His Diana. Diana of the beach. It was incredible, impossible-yet there she was smiling out of the page. It was a posed studio shot, a still. The caption beneath it said: Lady Diana as she appeared in her most recent film, «No More Camelots.»

Of course. That was where he had seen her. In the flicks. In scores of magazines and papers.

As he rejoined J on the curb the old man said, «You must be very curious indeed, Richard. Risking traffic like this for a thruppenny paper.»

Blade grinned at his chief. «I get these spells, sir. Worse than any cat.» He affected a Cockney accent. «Cor, mate, it comes over me all sudden, it does. If I don't know who David is I'll blow me flipping lid.»

J missed hailing an empty taxi and muttered a genteel curse. «I could have told you that, my boy. Sir David Throckmorton-Pell. The lady's husband.»

Blade kept an impassive face. He glanced again at the picture of Diana. Lady Dianal The minx. She had used her right name.

«I've heard of Sir David, of course. The judge. The one who sits in the Old Bailey? A pretty savage old boy, from all I've read.»

J had his own sense of humor. He said, «That's the one. They call him `The Rope,' I hear, and I hardly suppose it is because he likes to tie knots-unless they are hangman's knots.»

Blade hardly heard him. He was staring at the picture and remembering. The blue sea. Green eyes. Sinking down and down until…

«Richard-Richardl Good grief, man. Are you in a trance?»

Blade glanced up. J had snared a taxi and was already ensconced, the door open and waiting, the driver looking impatient. Blade folded the paper and thrust it into his jacket pocket. «Sorry, sir. Wool-gathering again.»

J directed the taximan to the Tower and then gave Blade a sharp glance. Blade avoided his eyes and stared out at the traffic. It was clotted like stale jam. They would be a time getting to the Tower.

J said, «Why the interest in Lady Diana's peccadilloes? Do you know the lady?»

Blade avoided a direct lie, but only just. «Not really know her,» he said. «I've seen her in films.»

He did not really know her. He thought of the old joke about sexual congress not constituting an introduction, and had difficulty in repressing a smile.

J leaned forward and spoke sharply to the driver. «Can't you go a little faster, man?» Lord Leighton would have the computer ready and His Lordship did not like to be kept waiting.

They were trapped in — a endless maze of traffic. The driver scowled in his mirror and said, «If I 'ad wings, Gov, I could maybe fly over this blinkin' mess. But this 'ere cab didn't come equipped with no wings, so we waits. Yer can always walk, Gov.»

J settled back in frustration. Blade took the paper from his pocket and began to skim through the story about

Lady Diana. J craned to see the picture. «Quite a lovely girl, isn't she?»

Blade nodded. «Beautiful.» And passionate. Fey. Certainly amoral-somehow he could not think of her as immoral-with a hard core of honest lust and a sweetness to temper it. All of this he must keep to himself.

J began to stuff his pipe, resigned now to the long wait and the fact that they would be late and Lord L would be angry. Helmeted bobbies appeared and began to sort out the traffic amid an unholy din of squawking horns.

J, reading over Blade's shoulder, said, «She has run away from the old boy again, eh? Not the first time, either. Not much news in that, really, but of course they have to puff it up. Make what they can of it. A pity, really. For both of them. Of course they should have known better-these May and December things never work Out.»

By this time Blade had finished the story. The Lady

Diana was a sometime film actress, a member of the Jet

Set, of the Now and Beautiful people, and she had an in dependent fortune. That mini-dress she had so raffishly tossed on the sand it had probably cost a hundred pounds.

«Very odd, that marriage. Can't imagine why either of them got into it. It isn't as though she were a totsy on the make-quite a good family, you know. Her father is Baron Gervase. Tons of money. Pulp and paper products in the Midlands, something like that.»

Blade gave his boss a sideways look. This was a facet of J he had never seen before. But then J was a spy-master and it was his job to know about people. All sorts of people. Still-

It rather amused Blade to see J on the defensive. «I do occasionally read Anthony Asquith's column in the Mirror,» the older man admitted. «Pays to keep up with things, you know.»

«Of course,» said Blade gravely.

«It's mostly guess and hearsay,» J continued. «But now and then one comes across a kernel of truth.»

Blade nodded. «I'm sure.»

J sucked at his pipe. It had gone out. «A little light reading is good for one at times.»

Blade laughed. «You needn't apologize, sir.»

«I'm not apologizing, damn it. It's just that, well, I know it is all a lot of bumf, but it is fascinating to read about these people at times. Utterly worthless, most of them, with far too much money, but one has to admit that they are not humdrum.»

«Yes,» agreed Blade. «One must admit that.» As the taxi lurched forward at last he regarded J covertly. J was head of M16, England's chief spy apparatus. Certainly nothing humdrum about that job-except, perhaps, to J. Since the advent of the computer J had been head of MI6A, the Security Authority set up to preserve the secret of Dimension X. He was a member of a select small group sharing the greatest secret since the Manhattan Project. Yet he read gossip columns to ease his boredom. Or, and in all honesty this must be a more likely reason, to ease his tensions, to gain some relief from the awesome burden of responsibility he carried.

Blade shook his head. It was a mad world.

They were out of the traffic snarl now and making good time. J, now that he had confessed his weakness, had in effect cried peccavt to the charge of reading a gossip monger, prattled on happily. Anthony Asquith, in the Mirror, was apparently an ardent champion of the Lady Diana. Hardly a column passed that did not mention her.

Blade remembered something she had said on the beach-something about cameras? «As long as there are no cameras»? That made sense, unless the lady lied. Very few of those people reeUy minded the flash bulbs.

«When they quarrel,» J was saying, «or get too bored r with each other, Lady Diana simply takes off without any explanation. The boredom, I should imagine, is mostly on her side. She takes her checkbook and a suitcase or two and just goes. Sooner — or later she always turns up-in New York, Hong King, Tangier, the south of France. It is said,» and J chuckled, «that the lady has a whim of iron.»

They were nearing the Tower of London. Blade, listening to J with one ear, sought to reconstruct a picture of Sir David Throckmorton-Pell in his mind. Pictures of the judge, `The Rope,' did not appear in the public prints as often as did those of his wife, but Blade had seen them.

He scowled as the image formed in his mind. Sir David, peruked and black-gowned, his white bands glistening in contrast to the dark and feral face, the parrot nose and thin lips, the small eyes not quite wide-set enough. A perfect picture of a hanging judge. The Rope. The old bastard, Blade thought with what he acknowledged was irrational anger, must be seventy. Or very near.

As the taxi stopped near the ancient Tower, another picture flashed into Blade's mind. He was in the dock and Sir David on the bench. The Old Bailey was crowded and they all knew. Sir David knew. He was puttifig the black kerchief on his periwig as he prepared to announce sentence.

«You, Richard Blade, sometimes using the nom de plume of Hercules, have been tried and found guilty of the crime of consupiscence toward the Lady Diana. You have, further, known the lady carnally and in so doing have defiled the coastal waters of Her Majesty. For this heinous crime I sentence you to hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead.»

Blade laughed. J was watching him with a puzzled expression. «What is it Richard? We're here, you know.»

«Nothing,» said Blade. «Nothing at all, sir. I just thought of something ridiculous.»

J paid the cabby. «I wish 1 could think of something plausible to tell Lord L. He won't believe traffic. He only leaves his labs once or twice a year, and then he goes in a limousine to see the Prime Minister.»

«I'm sure he will forgive us, sir. Here comes our escort.»

The burly Special Branch men who met and escorted them around to the site of the old Watergate were new to Blade. J saw to that. These men were outsiders, on the fringe of things, never allowed in the sanctum newly carved from the rock far below the Tower. They served for one tour only and were forever after bound by the Official Secrets Act.

J and Blade followed the men down a long tunnel, through the now-familiar maze of sub-basements to a bronze elevator door. One of the Special Branch men pressed a button and they waited. A hydraulic sighing began in the shaft.

One of the guards, a beaky nosed man with. shoulders nearly as wide as Blade's, eyed J and said, «His Lordship has called up several times, sir. Inquiring for you. Seemed to think you had gotten lost in the Tower somehow.»

J acknowledged this with a nod and a grunt. A moment later the car arrived. J stepped into it with Blade. He was now permitted to accompany Blade as far as the master computer room, a privilege that had not been easily won. Lord Leighton was a tyrant in his own domain. There were those, in fact, who considered the old boffin a tyrant in any domain.

There were no controls in the car. As some signal was given from below it began to dive, down and down, gaining speed. Blade, and J, had both been through this many times and still could not keep their stomachs in place.

The elevator car seemed to be in free fall. J clung to a handrail, biting fiercely on his pipe, a look of near panic on his face. Blade laughed. He knew that Lord L himself manipulated the elevator. His Lordship was having his little joke-and paying them back for being late.

Brakes gripped and held and the car began to slow. It eased to a stop and the bronze door slid back. Lord Leighton was waiting for them in a well-lighted foyer, barren except for a desk and two chairs. His Lordship stood, supporting himself at the desk, his polio-racked body encased in a white gown that hung on him like a shroud. He was a hunchback and as they moved toward him he grimaced and shifted his position to ease the constant pain in his hump. He glared at them with his yellow lion's eyes and directed all his venom at J.

«Where in the bloody hell have you been, man? How many times do I have to tell you that when I make a setting on the computer we must stay on schedule. To the 1000th of a minutel Now you've gone and bloody well bollixed up things-now I'm in the middle of a cycle. We'll have to wait until I can reset.»

J was a man who did not, as a rule, allow himself to be bullied. He often quarreled viciously with Lord L. Now he turned the other cheek and made propitatory sounds. Lord L ignored him and crooked a finger at Blade.

«Sit down, Richard, sit down. Sorry there isn't another chair, J, but then we don't really need you, do we?»

«I don't mind standing,» J said calmly.

«Suit yourself.» Lord Leighton shrugged and slipped crabwise into a chair at his desk. He picked up a pen and began to riffle through a thick sheaf of papers. «Might as well stay here. We're as private as we would be in the computer cage. It will be an hour or a bit more before I can bring the machine into exact phase again. You're looking extremely fit, Richard. Fit and ready. You are ready, I presume? No qualms? No last minute doubts?»

Blade, who had remained standing in deference to J, said that he felt very well.

«No more than the usual qualms and doubts,» he. added. He thought of what J had said about finding a replacement and was about to mention it when he saw J shake his head. It was not to be spoken of. For a moment he wondered why, then sloughed it off. J must have his reasons, as would Lord L. It would be most difficult, Blade thought, to find a replacement for him. He was not given to false modesty. But he had been through the computer six times, his brain structure twisted and altered to enable him to perceive and adapt to Dimension X. He could not-they all knew it-go on indefinitely. Of late Blade had often likened himself to a veteran fighter who wanted to quit before his brains were hopelessly scrambled. But for now he must forget that. The mission was upcoming.

There was another factor. Only now, for the first time, did he admit it to himself, bring it into the open, let it seep from the unconscious to the conscious level. He had met, at long last, a girl who might make him forget Zoe Cornwall. Who might fill the void in him, ease the ache, banish the pain. She had come from limbo into the June day and then limbo had swallowed her again. Now that he knew who she was, his Diana, it looked even more hopeless than before. Yet Blade was ready to admit, only to himself, that he might have fallen in love. The incident, and the girl, were past forgetting. He did not want to forget.

Lord Leighton made chicken tracks on his stack of papers and muttered to himself. J, his pipe going like a blast furnace, paced the foyer. Blade smiled wryly and wondered at their reaction should he tell them the truth: that he had found a girl he wanted above all other women. That he had as much right as any other man to a normal life, to give and take love and to have children and a home, and he was bloody well going to do it. He did not have to go through the computer in-he glanced at the Greenwich chronometer whirring over the desk-in less than half an hour. There was no law in England that could force him to do so.

He could resign. Resign and go back to his town flat and pack and start looking for Diana. J would understand, J would even approve, and there was always his job with M16. J, beneath his proper exterior, had come to loathe and fear the computer experiments. He would welcome back the Richard Blade who had been, BTC, one of his top intelligence agents.

And Lord L? The old scientist would go first into convulsions, then turn canny and coaxing, eventually threaten, and if all this failed he would in the end acquiesce and never speak to Blade again. Not because Blade had failed his country, but because Blade had failed Lord Leighton, and science.

Lord L glanced up at the chronometer and dropped his pen. «It's time to go, Richard. By the time I do the reset and get you properly hooked up the phase will come around. We mustn't miss it a second time.»

A blank steel door led out of the foyer. J went as far as this door, then halted and held out his hand to Blade.

«I've had second thoughts, dear boy. His Lordship is right. You don't really need me.»

His Lordship snorted and banged on through the door. Blade shook hands with J. «Goodbye, sir. Just in case, you know.»

J winced. «Yes, of course. All nonsense, of course. Leighton may not be the sweetest old boffin in the world but I trust him to bring you back. I'll see you, my boy, I'll see you. Good luck out there.»

«Thank you, sir. Goodbye.»

Blade followed Lord L down a long straight corridor that led into the computer complex. Leighton moved fast for an old man and a polio victim, scuttling along sideways and dragging one leg. His mass of white hair, thin and as light as down on a pink scalp, waved in the air as he moved. It gave him the appearance of wearing a halo which, Blade thought with a concealed smile, the old genius certainly did not deserve.

They paused at the first auto-security check station. Lord L placed his hand, palm down, on a square of green glowing glass and stood aside so Blade could do the same. Somewhere in the complex a sentry domputer would read their palm prints and compare them with master prints on record.

Without preliminary Lord L said, «Did J tell you that we are trying to find another lad?»

Blade nodded. Obviously the subject was not taboo if His Lordship chose to speak of it.

«Don't like the idea myself,» said Lord L. He glared at Blade with his leonine eyes and rasped, «Lot of nonsense.. The trips into DX are getting safer all the time. I've slaved to make the computer foolproof. No reason why you can't come and go indefinitely, Richard. No reason at all. Only J says he is worried and J had got the ear of the Prime Minister. J is afraid you'll have a breakdown. Rot, I call it. Pure sentimental rot. No place for that sort of thing in science. What do you say, Richard?»

A metallic voice spoke from the wall grille. «Check out. You may proceed.»

They walked through a high voltage barrier-it would have knocked them unconscious had they tried to penetrate it without the permission of the scanner-and approached an L-turn in the corridor.

Blade, who never submitted to coercion of any type, was nonetheless tactful. The old man was not everybody's cup of tea, but Blade had a genuine liking for him, and enormous respect for his awesome talent and, not least, his courage. More than once Blade had speculated as to how he himself would stand up to polio and a hump and old age. Could he face it so boldly, keep the light of energy and defiance burning in his eyes. He would doubtless never know, being not only young but a superb specimen, but he had doubts.

Lord L was still waiting for an answer. Blade said, «I am inclined to agree with J, sir. It isn't so much that I am tired, or afraid of the cumulative effects of brain restruotuning-though there is that-as it is a matter of luck. I think about that, sir. A man's luck does run out, you know.»

«Bah,» said Lord L. «We make our own luck. You've been listening to J.»

«It's not that, sir. He barely mentioned it. The thought, about luck, is my own.»

They went through another security check. Their photos were taken and sent to an electronic brain for scanning. The brain compared and concurred. They were sent on.

Lord Leighton slowed his pace. They were now winding their way through a maze of cubicles, each containing a computer and a white-smocked attendent. This was the guts of the Computer II Annex, devoted to both routine and recondite projects. A humming and clicking, the sound as febrile as locusts on the move, filled the area. Here were data banks for practically everything that concerned Her Majesty's Government and its subjects. Blade always experienced a sense of unease when he passed through this section. These whirring, spinning, blinking machines held the most intimate secrets of millions of people. They catalogued sin and virtue impartially. They were dispassionate and untouchable. They could not be seduced and they never lied. Nothing was forgotten, nothing forgiven, no favors asked or taken.

After a last security check-this one by voice print they left Computer II Annex and got into Computer I. This was the original space, gouged out from the living rock far beneath the Tower, in which Lord Leighton had assembled his first computer. The machine that had sent Blade to the land of Alb.

As they entered the master control room, where the gigantic sixth-generation computer squatted like a brain encased in gray crackled armor, Lord L shot a look at Blade and said, «I still say it is all nonsense. But I am a reasonable man. We'll discuss it, Richard, when you get back this time. Now, if you'll get ready-I have some adjustments to make for the reset.» He disappeared behind a large finlike shield.

Blade went through the familiar preparations. He found the usual cubby and stripped down to the buff. He put on the — loin cloth and smeared. himself with tar paste against burns. Then he went through a door into the penetrailia of the computer. The chair was waiting on its square of rubberoid fabric inside the glass housing. Again, as it always did, it reminded him of an electric chair. He had never seen an electric chair, though he had been in the States, many times, but he had seen pictures and this chair was very similar. J, and even Lord L, agreed in that. It had, over the months, become something of an occupational joke.

Blade went to the chair and sat down. The seat was of molded rubber and cold on his bare arse. He stared, without much thought, at the hundreds of tiny colored wires that extended from portholes in the machine casing. They ran into thick leaders, these blue, red, yellow and green wires, and, about thirty of the leaders, each tipped with a shiny elecrode the size of a shilling, would be attached to his body. In the massive guts of the machine the wires diversified and thinned and multiplied, copulated and had progeny, and in the end numbered over a million. A million aluminum, steel and copper nerves-and Lord Leighton knew the exact location and precise function of each one.

His Lordship entered the room and went to the glittering instrument board facing Blade. Watching him pull toggles and set levers, twist dials, head to one side, hump grotesque under the white smock, Blade felt the usual chill of anticipation coming over him. And with it renewed awe and respect for this crippled old man. Lord L had told him once that the average human brain contained some ten billion complex cells.

«The trick,» Lord L had laughed, «is to use every one of them to the limit. But we don't, you know. Most people use less than a third of their brain capacity. Laziness.»

Blade could not believe that this applied to Lord L.

The old man finished his instrumentation and came to where Blade waited in the chair. As he began taping the electrodes to the big man's flesh he went into the usual line of patter designed to quiet Blade's nerves. Blade did not need this-his was a natural and healthy fear-and there had been times when he wished the old man would not run on like a hangman trying to make his client's last moments more comfortable. But it would have done no good to complain; the logorrhea was habit by now and, in any case, His Lordship was hardly aware of Blade's presence at moments like this.

Lord L patted an electrode into place below Blade's left ear. «Aha, just so. Did I tell you, Richard, that I am writing a book about this experiment?»

He gave Blade no time to answer. «I am, you know. I am calling it The Theory of Intellectronics. Of course I won't be able to publish for years yet, maybe never, but I intend to finish the book just the same. Unvnm let me see. Yes, I believe that is right. We have never used a gen ital connection before, have we?»

Blade stared down at the electrodes attached to his scrotum. «No, sir. We never have. Why now? That's a rather sensitive spot, sir, and I don't see how-«

«Of course you don't, Richard. Nothing to bother your head about. But we can't stand still, you know. We must progress, always progress. You will have noted that I am using forty electrodes this time instead of thirty?»

Blade had noted.

Lord L finished a girdle of electrodes around Blade's narrow waist. «I may let you remain in Dimension X a bit longer this time, Richard. I said nothing to J about it, because he is turning into a nervous old maid, but you have a right to know.»

«How much longer, sir?»

He could not see His Lordship's face. The old man was behind him, taping electrodes to the small of his back.

«Not too long,» he said cheerfully. «But a bit longer than you have been staying. Give you a chance to explore and accomplish more, eh? Of course we can't know, other than a priori, just what sort of time scale you will encounter out there. But in terms of Home Dimension time I plan to keep you out at least two months. You have no objections?»

Ensnared as he was, caught in a net of wires and electrodes, Blade could do nothing but laugh at the question. «No objections, sir.»

«Good-good. Fine. J will worry and call me names, as usual, but I'll handle him. There, just about ready. Let's run through the briefing one last time, my boy. I know it is all very old hat by now, but to humor me we'll just run through the checklist. Right.»

Lord L ticked off the points on a clip board as Blade ran through them. Emergency measures, bow to best preserve his brain potential, optimum conditions for a computer recall. Blade knew them all by heart and had never had to use any of them.

The old scientist made a final tick on the list and put down the board. «We are set, then. Just remember that you cjo not have to make an effort to consciously remember. None at all. Your sessions with the chronos computer, and the magnesium pemoline, will take care of that. You will remember, just as you always have. Your brain protein synthesis has been doubled. When you get back we'll put you into hypnosis and drain it all out of you.»

Lord Leighton hobbled back toward the instrument console. Blade watched his gnarled old hand reach for the red enameled switch. The fear was gripping him now and, though he made no sign, his guts were a mass of ice. There would be pain. There would be madness. He was, once again, on the brink of the unknowable and unthinkable-until that switch closed and his brain cells dissolved and flowed and ran molten into some new matrix that would restructure them. It would be a new and different brain and it would perceive a new and different world.

Only he, Richard Blade, was blessed and cursed in this fashion. Of all the trillions who had lived and died on this tiny capsule called Earth, this spaceship careering out of nothing into nowhere, only Blade had been granted the miracle-that he for a time escape, that he see beyond the veil.

Lord Leighton smiled and waved a hand. «Good luck, my boy. Take every care.»

The switch closed.

Blade felt his eyes popping out as a thousand gallons of blood was pumped into his head. Lord L was a white scrawl on a blackboard and a giant eraser whisked him away. Blade felt his blood harden into raw red stuff, a conduit for the current that invaded him. Suddenly he was very small, a micro-man, and he was scooped up and attached to a whirring dynamo wheel. Around and around and around and around-he was doing 5000 rpm.

The giant bloody-pawed rat came out of a Hansel and Gretel house and laughed at Blade. The rat knelt and raised his scarlet paws in prayer. Blade, still tiny, saw that the rat was wearing a saddle. It wished to be ridden. Blade vaulted into the saddle.

The rat changed into a gigantic black steed, pawing air and snorting fire. Blade was riding, riding, riding. He looked back and saw his followers: millions of them, millions of Blades, all himself and all on black chargers.

Blade raised his sword, so long it touched the sun, and shouted into the black rushing wind. «Chargel»

Eternal winds caught the word and hurled it back to the horde behind him and he heard the million echoes: «Charge-charge-charge-charge-charge-«

He lost his seat on the black steed and fell. And fell. And fell. He was in a sunny meadow, unhurt, already forgetting, hearing the sound of running water and consumed by a great thirst. He saw a brook and ran toward it. As he was about to drink, the brook changed into a girl, a slim and red-upped girl and Blade kissed her and found her lips made of salt and there was no surcease for his thirst. The girl changed into a cat and clawed his face and leaped away from him, spitting.

Blade began to cry. He found a leaf and formed it into a cup and cried into it. When it was full. he drank his own tears.

There came a terrible sound, a hissing and crackling and screaming. A wall of fire rushed toward him. The fire encircled him and began to close in, compressing him into an even smaller space. As the wall of flame drew nearer he saw that it was composed of thousands and thousands of individual fires. People. Men and women and children.

Each aflame, each pointing burning fingers at Blade, each screaming oaths at him with fiery tongues.

There was a stench of hell. Blade began to burn. He watched, feeling no pain, as his feet charred and turned black. On came the flame wall, to consume him, consume him ….