Return To Kaldak

Chapter 1

The dark green Rover pulled into a reserved space in the parking lot. The man who got out wore a tweed sport jacket, corduroy trousers, and nondescript walking shoes. The clothing didn't disguise his powerful frame or his athlete's grace of movement as he walked toward one of the brick buildings around the parking lot.

He was hatless, so the breeze ruffled thick black hair cut unfashionably short. Women were apt to describe his face as ruggedly handsome. This did no justice to the penetrating quality of his large gray eyes. They flicked their gaze continuously from point to point, never leaving anything around him unobserved for more than a few seconds.

Then the man reached the door of the building and vanished from the sight of the two men watching from the window above. The taller one turned to the other and said, «As much as I hate to admit it, Richard looks in splendid form.»

«You don't really hate to admit that he's fit for another trip, do you, J?» said the second man.

«Not really, Leighton. But if I thought he weren't, I'd insist on a delay no matter what hopes you had for your new booth!»

Leighton ran his long arthritic fingers through what remained of his white hair. Then he smiled thinly. «I hardly need to be reminded of that, J.»

«True.» Lord Leighton was actually being exceptionally moderate. His scientific genius was world famous. So was his temper. When someone seemed to be in the way of one of his experiments, he behaved like a she-bear defending her cubs. Although he was past eighty, he showed no signs of mellowing.

But then, J reflected, that was hardly to be expected. The man was a bloody genius, and had a right to be proud of it, particularly when he was still producing fine work. Also, if you're born with a hunchback and half-crippled by polio as a child, you learn to fight your own battles early. No one else will fight them for you. Not for the first time, J thanked whatever or whoever was responsible that he himself still enjoyed good health at an age when he could have been drawing his civil service pension.

The main reason J wasn't retired was the man who'd just entered the building. His name was Richard Blade. J had picked him as a promising candidate for the secret intelligence agency MI6A when Blade was fresh out of Oxford. He'd more than fulfilled that promise.

Then Lord Leighton conceived the experiment of linking an advanced computer with a human brain Blade's, to be precise. He hoped to create a superior combination of human and electronic intelligence, by having the computer generate a field matching Blade's brain waves. The actual result was Blade's being hurled off into a parallel world. Leighton christened it Dimension X after Blade got back.

Giving the mystery world a name didn't make it any the less mysterious. It didn't help, either, that Blade turned out to be the only man in the free world who could make the journey. Others returned insane or not at all. Millions of pounds and dozens of Lord Leighton's experiments later, this was still true. Meanwhile, J had a busy time defending Project Dimension X from enemy agents, accidents, and sheer human stupidity. He had almost as busy a time defending Richard Blade from Leighton's wilder experiments.

To J, Blade was more than a friend or a trusted subordinate. He was the son the aging bachelor spymaster would never have. To Leighton, Blade was hardly more than an experimental guinea pig.

Or at least he had been once. That was before Leighton's experiment with the new KALI computer let an immaterial but deadly monster from another Dimension loose on the world. Blade eventually defeated the Ngaa, and Leighton seemed to have learned his lesson. At least he hadn't sprung either of his latest ideas on J and Blade at the last minute, the way he used to.

Also, the Project was actually beginning to creep toward solutions to some of its long-standing problems. Blade could now take some equipment with him, even though it had to be expensively fabricated from a special alloy he'd discovered in a Dimension called Englor. The transitions themselves no longer left him weakened or suffering from headaches. From the last trip he'd even brought back a live, functional animal-

«Yeep!» A small brightly colored shape darted out from behind Lord Leighton's desk. It was Cheeky, the «Feathered One» from the Dimension of the Crimson River. He was about the size and shape of a monkey, but covered from head to foot with bright blue and green feathers instead of fur.

He was also telepathic.

J had always been open-minded about the possibility of telepathy. He'd seen too many odd things in too many lands only a little less strange than Dimension X. Leighton had always been a militant skeptic.

What Cheeky did when he was around Blade had converted J to a believer. Even Leighton was saying, «I'd like to run some experiments under carefully controlled conditions. That's been the biggest stumbling block in dealing with ESP poorly designed experiments run by believers or outright nut cases!»

J put his foot down, however, on running the experiments right after Blade's return from the Dimension of the Crimson River. Blade was obviously suffering from something like combat fatigue. Although he was the sanest and toughest man J had ever known, with enough courage and survival skills for any six normal people, Blade still reached the limits of endurance at times.

Was the sheer loneliness of Blade's profession also catching up with him? J had to wonder. Blade's fiance, Zoe Cornwall, had broken off her engagement because the Official Secrets Act didn't let him explain his trips to Dimension X. When they were on the verge of getting back together, she was kidnapped and horribly killed by the Ngaa. By all accounts Blade had left a good dozen children in the various lands of Dimension X, but in England he had neither wife nor child nor steady girlfriend nor much of a home life to help him forget the grim battles he had to fight alone in Dimension X.

That was why J was so glad when Blade went out and bought himself a country house in Hampshire. He was even happier to hear that Lord Leighton contributed part of the money. Now Richard was busily restoring the place. While he was doing this, he'd be too busy between trips to feel lonely. When the house was finished, he would have a place he could call his own to come back to.

If he lived long enough, he would even be able to retire there and-who could say? — marry and raise a family.

Cheeky yeeeeped again, breaking J's train of thought, and started racing around the room. Leighton stood protectively in front of his desk, arms spread wide to keep the feather-monkey from jumping up on it and scattering valuable papers to the four winds. J wondered if it was his own thoughts about Richard Blade which had excited the little animal. Then he heard familiar footsteps on the stairs outside the office.

So did Cheeky. He ran to the door, leaped up, and caught the doorknob with both paws. He swung there, turning the knob while he kicked at the door frame with both feet. The door swung open and Richard Blade walked in.

Seen close up, he seemed to have gone gray-haired all at once. Then J took a still closer look and recognized plaster dust. He also saw dark rings of grit under Blade's usually well-manicured fingernails.

«Just come from the house, Richard?»

«Drove up this morning,» said Blade with a grin. «The workers knocked off at their usual time, leaving the job half-arsed. So I finished it off myself. Up until midnight doing it, too, and then of course there wasn't any hot water!»

Leighton made a tut-tutting noise of mock indignation. «The union will get you for that, Richard.»

«What they don't know won't hurt them,» said Blade cheerfully. «Besides, the contractor's foreman is the son of my father's old groom. He's not going to sneak.»

«Good,» said J. «How is the house coming, by the way?» He'd seen it once. It was an eighteenth-century squire's establishment, appallingly run-down when Blade acquired it.

«Well, we can keep partridges and stray pigs out of the ground-floor rooms now. There are four rooms on the upper floor where you don't need an umbrella when it rains. And you can light at least one fireplace without fumigating the whole house.»

At this point Cheeky yeeeped indignantly at being ignored and took a flying leap onto Blade's shoulder. Blade scratched his feathery crest absentmindedly, without taking his eyes off Lord Leighton and J. «Well, from the look on His Lordship's face I should say he's pickled another bright idea for us,» he said. «Do I go through hanging from a trapeze this time?»

J swallowed his laughter. Leighton merely shook his head. «No. It's simply a couple of logical extrapolations from our experience last time.»

The last trip into Dimension X, Leighton used a new technique. Whereas in the past Blade had been greased up and wired all over with electrodes, for the last trip he had stood in the middle of a booth of wire mesh, charged with an electrical field linked to the computer. Since he always came back without being physically linked to the computer, why couldn't he go the same way?

It worked-once. Leighton had a scientist's confidence that what had worked once would work again, under the same conditions. J was less optimistic, but he was willing to go along with the scientist, if Richard agreed.

Leighton explained. «With the new booth, there is a lot more room within the area the electrical field covers. Room for more than a more-or-less naked Blade. We don't have a second person trained and ready to go, but we do have Cheeky.»

Blade's first mental reaction must have been negative. Cheeky stood up, yeeeping indignantly, his feathers bristling, shaking both paws at Lord Leighton. «Easy, Cheeky, easy,» said Blade.

Leighton went on. «Cheeky is particularly suitable because of his small size, and his association with Blade.» (J noted that Leighton didn't use the word «telepathy.») «He is also intelligent enough to survive for a while if he and Blade got separated.»

«A short while, yes,» said Blade dubiously. «But that depends on the climate and the weather. I'll have to ask him.» Leighton's eyebrows rose, and Blade's voice hardened. «If you treat him as an experimental animal with no will of his own, I won't take him. I won't even leave him in your hands while I'm gone, and the devil take the Official Secrets Act!»

J nodded. He rather wished Richard hadn't forced the issue so bluntly, but he certainly had the, right of it.

«Very well,» said Leighton. «You can ask his consent. But before you do, let me finish, if you please.»

«The worst danger,» Leighton continued, «is in the transitions into Dimension X and back to Home Dimension. You see, we're not sure exactly how much molecular cohesion a body retains while transitioning between Dimensions. You've done your best to describe your sensations, Blade, but I'm afraid it hasn't been good enough.»

J relaxed. If Leighton was willing to admit any sort of limits on their knowledge of the experiment, he was likely to be reasonable. Then the scientist's next words grabbed his attention.

«If your molecules and Cheeky's lose their cohesion on the way, they might intermingle. They might also not-ah-sort themselves out before you reached the other side. Do you remember the film The Fly?»

Blade obviously did. So did J. He imagined a monstrous creature, half Blade and half Cheeky, stumbling out of the booth or lost in the wilderness of some unknown Dimension. Only a lifetime of selfcontrol kept Blade's nausea from showing on his face.

«If the new booth hadn't worked out so smoothly the first time, I'd have my doubts,» said Blade slowly. «As it is, I'm willing to try it. What about you, Cheeky?» He spoke as if he was speaking to an intelligent, rational being. J found himself looking around for the person being addressed.

«Yik-yik-yeeeek!» went the feather-monkey. Then he hopped up on top of Blade's head and clung with all his fingers and toes buried in Blade's hair. Blade stood with a long-suffering expression until Cheeky climbed back down onto his shoulder. Then he nodded.

«He's willing to try it.»

«Splendid!» said Leighton, with genuine relief and enthusiasm in his voice. «The new booth is a real breakthrough. The faster we can exploit it, the faster we can make the Project really successful. Or at least less vulnerable to accidents,» he added. «I'll really sleep a trifle better when the Project can survive Richard's falling off a ladder while fixing the roof on that confounded Hampshire mausoleum of his!»

«I couldn't agree more,» said Blade. «In fact, do we need to limit my equipment anymore? The fabric and rubber material I took through last time survived as well as the Englor Alloy.»

«More equipment, as well as Cheeky?» said J dubiously. «That's two experiments on one trip.»

«True,» said Blade. «But some sort of backpacking outfit shouldn't make that much difference. I was also thinking of Cheeky. I can forage for my meals or tighten my belt better than he can. I've got to take some food for him, at least.» The feather-monkey yeeeped in apparent approval.

«I must say I was thinking along similar lines my self,» said Leighton. «I would suggest some care, though. We've got a second knife made of EA Two, so you'll have a spare. We can also make up one for Cheeky in a few days. Other than that, I'd suggest not taking anything metal. Above all, no guns. I'd be a trifle uneasy about subjecting anything explosive to the new field this time.»

«I wasn't thinking of a gun,» said Blade. «It's the sort of thing I might find a bit hard to explain if I landed in a pretechnological society. I've been suspected of black magic often enough as it is. What about one of those knockdown crossbows we used to have in MI6A? You remember them, sir. Fit in an attache case, but a two-hundred-pound pull and no metal in them.»

J nodded. «I think I still have enough influence to rout one of them out of the Weapons people.»

«Then it's settled, is it?» said Leighton.

«As far as I'm concerned, it is,» said Blade. «What about you, sir?»

J still had reservations. This was going to be the biggest leap into the dark since the original KALI computer. However, they were already far beyond the limits of what anyone outside the Project considered science. What did they have to lose?

«Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb,» said J. «See you next week, Richard.» They shook hands, and J also reached up and patted Cheeky's head. Blade had tried to teach the feather-monkey to shake hands, but he flatly refused.

Outside, J was so preoccupied as he walked to his car that he was nearly run down by a delivery truck pulling into Complex Two. Several men came out and started unloading crates and film canisters. J watched them idly for a moment. It seemed that Complex Two was growing every time he came.

Well, it certainly didn't hurt the Project to have room to expand. There was already more than enough equipment and people to fill two of the three buildings. If the Project was on the edge of a real breakthrough. .

J firmly squelched his optimism and climbed into his car. No matter how close they were to a breakthrough, everything still depended on Richard Blade.