Return To Kaldak

Chapter 28

Something was wrong.

There was a blanket over Blade, and there hadn't been one in the lifter. Instead of the stiff parachutes, there was a cool sheet under him, smooth and with a smell that practically shouted, «Hospital!» Had the lifter crashed.

Perhaps. But Kaldak didn't have hospitals like that.

Blade opened his eyes, then sat up. He was in the familiar room in the Complex's private hospital where he spent a couple of days for observation after each trip. That was the rule, whether he came back wounded or not. The doctors wanted their piece out of him, and that was all there was to it!

He looked around the room. Hanging on the wall was the Kaldakan soldier's uniform he had worn on the flight to see Bairam in his place of exile in the south. Why the Complex's scientists hadn't yet absconded with it to conduct their experiments was a mystery, but then it was as hard now to believe what he was seeing as it had been to believe he was back in Kaldak. However, there was just as little point in ignoring what his senses were shouting to him.

He'd fallen asleep in Kaldak and awakened in Home Dimension. As simple as that-the simplest and easiest transition from one Dimension to another in the whole history of the Project!

And if that wasn't enough, this simple homecoming was the end of the most complicated, nerve-wracking mission in the history of the Project. Well, no. The fight against the Ngaa had been worse. But this return to Kaldak was certainly a bloody good second!

Blade laughed. Somewhere up above was a Higher Power with a taste for practical jokes. Whether you called him God, Buddha, Allah, or the Lord of the Laws, he had to exist. There was no other way to explain this sort of thing.

Then a thought made Blade's heart race so that the nurse on duty monitoring his vital signs nearly punched the emergency button.

Cheeky!

Yeeep? It sounded both sleepy and irritable, but it was close at hand. Blade reached for a light switch and searched the room again. There it was, in a corner-a large cage of heavy wire mesh coated with plastic, and Cheeky inside it.

They must have known he shouldn't be separated from Blade, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to let something as unsanitary as a feather-monkey loose in a hospital room. So they'd caged him.

The bastards and their rules! Blade punched the call button for the nurse and got out of bed, trailing wires. Cheeky was getting out of that cage now, and if the doctors fussed-well, he could always call up Lord Leighton. The scientist would be on his side, where Cheeky was concerned.

When the nurse arrived, Blade was sitting on the bed, scratching Cheeky behind the ears. He was smiling as he contemplated what Lord Leighton would say to the doctors if their stupidity got him dragged out of bed at night.

Blade stopped smiling when he contemplated what Leighton would say when he found out that people in Dimension X had learned about inter-Dimension travel. True, the technicians and scientists of Kaldak and Doimar were in no position at the moment to discover a method for traveling to other Dimensions, but in time-

Leighton wasn't going to be pleased, either, that Blade and Cheeky had been separated upon arrival in Dimension X, and that Blade never found out anything about why he went to Kaldak and Cheeky went to Doimar. That might affect their plans for the next trip.

But at least Cheeky was here with him in Home Dimension. That and the fact that Blade had brought back with him the Kaldak uniform-made of a Oltec fabric and an Oltec kind of plastic-should certainly satisfy the scientist somewhat.

As for Blade, he was pleased enough that a balance of power now seemed to exist in the Dimension he had just visited. It had been necessary for the Doimari to lose some power and for the Tribes to gain some, but now, with Kaldak, they should all be able to live in a state of equilibrium and peace.

In a somewhat less well-equipped hospital in Doimar, the Seeker named Arsha propped herself up in bed. She was feeling much better today, and she knew it wouldn't be too much longer until she and her baby were discharged.

Arsha was the young scientist's assistant who had been experimenting on Cheeky at the research complex, before the feather-monkey had escaped and been reunited with Blade. She was also the one who had been punished by Detcharn but who had later seen to it that he fell to his death from the balcony railing. Arsha had also been one of the few Seekers to escape the cataclysm when the cliff had collapsed. During the chaos of the attack, she had managed to sneak down many flights of stairs, deep into the bowels of the earth, to the secret rooms where the baby Brant was kept. After the rocks and earth had settled, she had managed to carry the infant to safety through the long escape tunnel, which let out a mile away from the destroyed complex. Exhausted and badly shaken, she was spotted by a Doimari lifter and then taken to the City, where she claimed the baby was her own. Since all the other Seekers who knew about the baby had died in the cataclysm, Arsha alone knew the infant's true identity: he was the son of Du-Shro Detcharn and his half-sister Moshra. He was thus the grandson of the Sky Master Blade.

She looked over to where the baby sat in his crib. He was watching her with his penetrating dark eyes, and he smiled and gurgled in delight when she turned to look at him. He certainly was a rugged-looking little boy, big for his age, with his sturdy body and black hair. He would grow up to be quite a man, perhaps even a god like the Sky Master himself.