The Ruins Of Kaldac

Chapter 1

The sky was gray, and a chilly wind blew rain through empty windows, turning the dust on the floor into mud. The tall man standing by the doorway looked out briefly at the foul weather, then shrugged and walked back into the room.

The man was not only tall. He was also heavily built, with a broad chest and muscle-corded arms and legs to match. He still moved with a light step which hinted at speed and coordination as well as sheer muscle. His hair was black, and his skin was deeply tanned under the dirt. His skin also showed marks and ridges which could only be the scars of painful wounds. He was naked except for a loinguard which gleamed in the dim light with a silvery metallic sheen, but in spite of the breeze he was not shivering.

The man's name was Richard Blade. He was probably the only man in any world who'd traveled into more than thirty different Dimensions, fought deadly battles in all of them, and always returned alive.

Richard Blade didn't worry anymore about whether each Dimension he visited could really be called a complete «world.» One Dimension certainly reached out many light-years to the stars, but that didn't mean they all did. In some Dimensions he'd never seen more than an area smaller than his native England. Neither made much difference to his chances of coming back alive. After a while he left the question of the Dimension's size more and more to Lord Leighton, the scientist who'd opened the road to new Dimensions. As long as he came back in one piece, Richard Blade, who was essentially a practical man, was content. Before he started traveling among the Dimensions, he was a field operative for the secret British intelligence agency MI6A.

Lord Leighton was quite a different proposition. Before he discovered the road to new Dimensions, he'd already had a long career as one of Britain's most brilliant scientists. He was born a hunchback, and polio twisted his legs when he was a child, but there was nothing wrong with his mind. Even his best friends would admit that there was a great deal wrong with his manners, which were abominable, but even his worst enemies would admit that his mind was a precision instrument of extraordinary brilliance.

Leighton had developed a theory that if the mind of a physically robust and highly intelligent man was linked to a powerful computer, a new form of intelligence would emerge. He chose Richard Blade, linked him to a computer of his own invention, and wound up sending Richard Blade off into an unknown world.

The discovery of what they called «Dimension X» was a complete accident, but that didn't make it any less important. There had to be untapped natural resources and new scientific discoveries waiting out there in Dimension X. If they could just be brought home to Britain, then put to use….

Several years and several million pounds later, Project Dimension X was only a little ahead of where it started. Richard Blade was still the only man who could travel into Dimension X and return alive. He still couldn't return to a particular Dimension except by accident. He still couldn't take much equipment with him or bring back anything except by chance. Some of what he brought back was no more than exotic junk. Some of it was jewels or precious metals which could at least be sold to raise money for the Project. Some of it was knowledge or technology which would be priceless when and if it could be put to practical use.

However, things seemed to be looking up a trifle. Blade paced around the gloomy room and listened to the rain, fingering the belt of his silvery loinguard. That was something based on Dimension X technology, and he'd worn it safely through the transition into this Dimension!

Blade thought of the first time he'd seen the loinguard, just this morning. He'd arrived at the Tower of London a few minutes early, then waited under the hard eyes of the Special Branch men who guarded the entrance to the Project. Eventually J arrived, as erect and ageless as ever, looking like a retired civil servant rather than one of the great spymasters of modern times. He'd chosen Blade straight out of Oxford for MI6A. He still headed the agency, but now he was also chief of security for Project Dimension X. He was about the best qualified man for the job, and it also let him keep a watchful eye out for Blade, who was the closest thing to a son he'd ever known.

The two men rode down in the elevator to the Project's complex buried two hundred feet underground. Then they took the walk down the long gleaming corridor to the computer rooms. By now Blade could have walked the corridor blindfolded. As they passed the last of the electronic sentinels which monitored the corridor for intruders, J turned to Blade. «Leighton called me last night, Blade. Said he's got a surprise for us.»

Blade managed to restrain his enthusiasm. A «surprise» from Lord Leighton could be almost anything. It was likely to be a new development the scientist thought he or J would oppose if they knew about it too far in advance. Lord Leighton's creativity and enthusiasm sometimes ran ahead of his good judgment.

«Did he say anything else?»

J nodded. «He said it had to do with the Englor Alloy #2.»

That was somewhat more encouraging. In one Dimension Blade found a country called Englor, strangely like Home Dimension England in many ways, locked in a deadly struggle with an opponent just as strangely like the Soviet Union. Englor's airplanes were built of alloys far beyond anything in Home Dimension, and Blade brought back formulas and samples for several of them.

It turned out that the most powerful electrical field imaginable would flow through an object made of Alloy #2 from Englor as if it weren't there. When Blade traveled into Dimension X, he was surrounded by a strong electrical field and couldn't wear anything which might disrupt its flow. With equipment made of Alloy #2, he might hope to reach Dimension X in something more than his bare skin, armed with something more than his bare hands!

Unfortunately there were problems in producing Englor Alloy #2 (EA 2 for short) with Home Dimension technology. The problems had been solved only to the point where a few ounces could be produced each day, at a cost of more than five pounds an ounce. On his last trip into Dimension X, Blade carried a length of wire made of EA 2. It made the round trip with him, so at least the theory about traveling with the alloy was sound enough. Now it seemed that Lord Leighton might have some practical applications of the theory to show Blade and J.

Leighton met them at the entrance to the computer rooms and scuttled ahead of them to his private workshop. He looked rather like a gnome hurrying to show his treasure. The surprise lay on the wooden table in the workshop. Blade picked it up and turned it over several times in his hands. It was a loinguard shaped exactly like a standard athletic supporter but made entirely of EA 2. Blade would have recognized the silvery sheen, the flexibility, and the light weight even if J hadn't informed him.

Blade put the loinguard back on the table and looked at the scientist. «Thank you for the thought, sir. But I'm not one of those people who keep their brains between their legs.»

A choking sound made Blade turn around. He saw J trying to stifle laughter. To give the older man time to recover, Blade turned back to Leighton. «Joking aside, sir, why this particular piece of equipment?»

«Two reasons,» said Leighton. «One, it was the biggest thing we could make with the amount of EA 2 we had and still have enough left over for further experiments. We could have made you a small helmet, but we'd have had nothing left except your wire and some scraps and powder.»

«I see.»

«Two, you've often carped about arriving in other dimensions stark naked. Well, now you have something to wear-an immodest garment, to be sure-nevertheless, it does cover you somewhat, and it does protect a vulnerable part of your body. You wouldn't deny that, would you?»

Blade laughed. «Hardly.» An injury there could easily cripple a man from pain or loss of blood, even if it didn't castrate him, so maybe the silver loinguard did have some practical use. It was reassuring for Blade to realize that even if Lord Leighton sometimes acted like a mad scientist, he still had Blade's best interests in mind. Blade remembered the splitting headaches he used to have when he woke up in Dimension X, before Leighton invented the KALI capsule. Sometimes those headaches were so bad he wouldn't have found it easy to either fight or run. The KALI capsule got rid of them, which improved his chances for survival.

But now Blade's mouth tightened as he remembered all the people the KALI capsule hadn't helped to survive. Leighton had the seven-foot capsule controlled by a new, self-programming computer. The computer opened a path between the Dimensions to a monstrosity called the Ngaa. It killed more than thirty people, put the whole world in danger, and nearly destroyed Project Dimension X before Blade fought and destroyed it in one of his grimmest battles.

One of the Ngaa's victims was Zoe Cornwall, once Blade's fiancee. He now knew that he was never likely to love another woman the same way, yet he would never be able to marry a woman he didn't love as he'd loved Zoe. Considering how he made his living, that was probably just as well, at least for the woman.

Still, Zoe should not have been dead! Blade had not allowed himself to grow bitter and no longer held her death against Lord Leighton. He also did not let himself forget her. He had to remember that Lord Leighton's scientific genius was something like a two-edged sword, which could slash both friends and enemies.

Blade picked up the loinguard again. «Can I get this off in a hurry if I have to?»

«Yes.» Leighton pointed. «See-there's a quick-release hook on the side.»

Blade saw the hook but tested it several times before he put the loinguard back on the table. He still wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a bawdy joke by Lord Leighton, but it was also a step on the way to arriving better-equipped-and better «dressed»-in Dimension X. That meant survival.

«I'll take a chance,» he said. «What do you think, sir?» he asked J.

J frowned. «Well, Richard, it's your-ah, anatomy.»

«And I might add, Richard,» Leighton now said, «your traveling to and from Dimension X with this garment brings us one step closer to making an alloy-wire weapon or even an alloy-wire suit that will increase not only your survival chances but also those of another traveler to Dimension X. Assuming you and the alloy return intact, and once we produce enough of the alloy in our laboratories, we can attempt to send someone else with you to Dimension X. You'd like a companion, wouldn't you, Richard?»

Blade shrugged, but he well knew that the Project's success would be greatly enhanced if someone else could be sent to Dimension X. That other person, lacking Blade's genius for survival, would need a special weapon or the alloy-wire suit for protection. And, yes, Blade thought, he would enjoy having a companion from home in Dimension X.

When Blade climbed into the seven-foot KALI capsule an hour later, he was wearing the silver loinguard. He also wore the usual coat of black grease to guard against electrical burns. He wasn't exactly nervous, but anyone watching him would have noticed how carefully and thickly he greased his penis and groin.

He lay down in the capsule, and the lid closed over him, to leave him in the familiar coffinlike darkness with the lining of the capsule pressing against him everywhere. He felt the loinguard staying snugly in place. Good. It wouldn't make any difference at this end if it slipped out of position, but at the other end it might snag on something. That could be embarrassing.

Then the world around Blade dissolved in light and the KALI capsule seemed to vanish. The computer room with the looming crackle-finished consoles was all around him, with Leighton at the master control panel and J in the folding observer seat. He could see everything clearly, but it had all turned a hundred shades of blue. Leighton's white hair was an electric blue, the gray consoles were midnight blue, the red master switch was the color of a robin's egg

For a moment uncertainty caught Blade by the throat. The KALI capsule had never put him through one of these psychedelic displays before. Was the loinguard affecting the electrical field around him after all?

Then the blue laboratory exploded into a hundred shapeless pieces, each a different shade of blue. A high-pitched whine like an enormous mosquito tore at Blade's ears. Then there was only blackness for a moment, and after that damp grass under his back and a chilly wind blowing across his skin….

Now Blade continued to pace around the desolate room listening to the relentless sound of the rain. He felt as if he was the only man in all of Dimension X.