The Towers Of Melnon

Chapter ONE

England is a small and crowded country. Enough vacant land for the type of training center the secret intelligence agency MI6 wanted to build is often hard to come by. MI6 wanted at least a square mile with buildings, which doesn't grow on bushes along every cowpath and byway.

But it so happened that, just as MI6's search was beginning, a certain earl was being buried. This earl had been at Eton with the man called J, the head of MI6, in the days before World War I. This was so long ago that neither of the men enjoyed being reminded of how long ago it had been. But the friendship had lasted down the years. It had lasted as J rose to be one of the most distinguished spymasters in the free world, and as the earl rose to be a general, complete with VC and DSO, and later became a distinguished member of Parliament. But no amount of distinction can ensure that a man will not fall from a horse and break his neck, and the earl did just that.

J attended the funeral at the earl's family seat. Afterwards the new earl ushered him into the great, gloomy, oak-paneled library. There he made J a proposition concerning the disposal of the family estate-or at least of part of it.

«You know what death duties are like, sir,» said the younger man. «We should be able to hold on to the main estate. But father was rather old-fashioned. He preferred to keep as much in land as possible. We don't have much cash, so we're going to have to sell off the Herefordshire estate.»

«Indeed?» said J, with deceptive placidity.

«Yes. It's not a great huge thing, less than fifteen hundred acres. And the house is a great wretched Victorian pile that sheds tiles and chimney pots on alternate Thursdays. But the stables are in good shape, and there's plenty of room. Also a good bit of privacy. The land's heavily wooded, and the walls and fences have been kept up fairly well. My father was a bit-ah, shirty, when it came to trespassers. Got in trouble with the county over that a few times.»

«I know,» said J. He had been a guest at this same estate a number of times before, during, and after World War II.

«The thing of it is,» said the young earl, «I think father would have liked you to have a chance at the Herefordshire estate.»

«Why me?» said J. His placidity was even more deceptive now.

«Well, he always said he thought you were in some sort of-well, secret intelligence work. M15 or something like that. You know, James Bond stuff?»

«Suppose I were?» said J. «What does that have to do with the estate?»

«If you were, it occurred to father that you might want a training center of some sort. A nice secluded training center, someplace where a lot of tourists and passersby won't be butting in.»

J nodded. He kept his professional poker face, so he did not light up like a Christmas tree with sheer delight. At least not on the outside. But he did take a deep breath before saying, «I see.»

«We'd have to sell it,» the young earl went on. «I doubt if the law would just let us donate it. But I'll see about keeping the price down as far as I can. I know the intelligence agencies aren't exactly rolling in money these days.»

«Except in America,» said J with a wry grin. The wealth of people and equipment that his American colleagues had was always a sore point with him, sometimes a major one. They could claim at least a dozen estates of the size the young earl was offering.

«True,» said the younger man. «But I think father would have wanted you to get it cheap. He was always very big on the patriotic type of stuff-doing your bit for England and all that sort of thing.»

«Yes,» said J in an even voice. «He was 'very big' on serving England. He risked his life doing it in two wars, as a matter of fact.»

The young earl flushed slightly, recognizing a polite putdown when he heard one. To cover his embarrassment he went over to the sideboard and mixed two stiff Scotch-and-sodas. Then he returned to his chair and the two men got down to business.

Once they did, it was a simple matter of two phone calls to London-one apiece-and a few lines scribbled on a sheet of paper torn from the note pad next to the telephone. And MI6 found itself prospectively in possession of fifteen hundred acres of Herefordshire, at something less than ten pounds per acre.

After that, J went out to his Rover and put in two more calls on his scrambler-equipped radio-telephone. Both of these were also to London. One was to a man named Lord Leighton.

«Leighton, we've got the place for the new training center.»

«Splendid work. Where?»

«Not even on a scrambled line, if you don't mind.»

«Oh, to be sure, to be sure.»

«I'm starting back to London in a few minutes. Can you meet me for lunch at my club? Tomorrow at noon?»

«Certainly.»

«See you then.»

The second call was to a man named Richard Blade.

«Richard, my boy. How are you?»

«Tolerably well, sir. Just got back from Scotland. Fishing, a little rock-climbing, you know.»

«Fishing for what, Richard?» J knew that Blade was rather a woman-chaser, although he was always a gentleman about it. J neither approved nor disapproved.

«Salmon, sir. Nothing else,» Blade replied with a hint of mock reproach in his voice.

«Very good, very good. Now-we've picked up a place to use for that training facility I mentioned.»

«The one for the new agents-if and when?»

«Precisely.»

«Any progress on finding anybody to train there?»

«None that I've heard of lately. The PM promised me a report ten days ago, but nothing's come through.»

«Well, with the election coming up the man must have a lot on his mind.»

«To be sure.» That was one of the reasons J had not only made Richard Blade one of MI6's top agents, but also loved him like a son. Richard could always guess what the other person might be doing, and why. It was a social asset at home and a survival skill in the field. It could help a man charm a hostess at a Mayfair cocktail party and outwit a Russian SMERSH agent in the mountains of Czechoslovakia. Blade had done both.

«In any case,» J continued, «I'd like you to meet me for lunch at my club. Say noon tomorrow. Lord Leighton will be there also.»

«I'll be there, sir.»

«Fine, Richard, fine.»

J shut off the radio-telephone, started the car, and wheeled the Rover down the driveway and out through the front gate. The roof of the big sprawling eighteenth century house shone in the sun after the morning's rain. J grinned. The young earl who now ruled that house might scoff at patriotism and «doing his bit for England,» but he had just done it in spite of himself. He had given Project Dimension X something it had been seeking for quite some time.

Actually, Project Dimension X had been seeking quite a number of different and sometimes incompatible things for quite a long time. Sometimes the Project reminded J of a gigantic fox-hunt over a mist-shrouded and treacherous field, with only a dozen or so hunters and at least twenty foxes. You couldn't hope to catch all of the beasts, but you could at least try chivying them all along in more or less the same direction.

But there was no doubt that helping Project Dimension X was helping England. In a nutshell, the Project involved sending a man into a succession of alternate dimensions, to survive or die. Hopefully he would survive and explore the dimension. And if it had resources or techniques or devices unknown in home dimension, he would bring them back to England with him.

Dropping down from the abstract to the concrete details (all ten thousand of them or so), Project Dimension X was a little less simple. It had begun by accident the day Lord Leighton connected Richard Blade's mind to a computer. Lord Leighton had been and still was England's most brilliant scientist-not to mention the most maddening one to work with. He had conceived the idea of creating a combination of human and electronic intelligences, superior to either man or computer alone. Well and good.

For the experiment he had needed the most nearly perfect physical and mental specimen he could find. That specimen had been Richard Blade. With nearly twenty years as a top MI6 agent already under his belt, Blade had forgotten more about survival than most men could ever learn. Leighton plugged his specimen into the computer-and Blade wound up in what came to be called Dimension X. He arrived as naked as the day he was born, but his superb mind and body kept him alive. Eventually Lord Leighton was able to reverse the process that had sent Blade winging off into Dimension X. Blade came back to England, back to the computer complex under the Tower of London. It had been very simple, the first time.

But Project Dimension X promptly started shooting out complications in all directions, like the tentacles of an octopus. England's best scientists were unable to duplicate any of the samples of advanced materials or technology that Blade brought home from Dimension X. Sooner or later they would make a breakthrough, of course. But in the meantime the Prime Minister was not particularly happy. He had to justify the millions of pounds the Project had swallowed to inquisitive members of Parliament, so his unhappiness was hardly surprising.

It might have helped if they had been able to send Blade back to the same dimension again and again. But so far that was impossible. They had to fire him off in the general direction of Dimension X and hope he would land somewhere he could survive. This «shooting into the blind» improved neither the efficiency of the Project nor the tempers of Lord Leighton, J, the Prime Minister, or Richard Blade.

And of course there was always the problem of Blade himself. Not that there was anything wrong with him. He had suffered psychological problems of various sorts at one time-drinking, impotence, and the like. That was the result of unexpected reactions of his brain to the computer. But he seemed to have stabilized now. After fourteen successive trips into Dimension X, he was still the most nearly perfect physical and mental specimen available.

And that was the problem about Blade. He was too perfect. In fact, he was the only man in the free world who could travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. Even if J hadn't been concerned for Blade personally, this was a situation that had to be changed. Preferably as fast as possible. If Blade's luck ever ran out in Dimension X, the Project would come to a screeching halt. What the devil, it would come to a halt if Blade were run over by a bloody London taxi!

So a search was on-had been on for two years now-for somebody to take Blade's place. Preferably several «somebodies.» Once they had a regular team of Dimension X travelers, Blade could retire. Perhaps he could handle the training end of the Project? Or perhaps if he did go into Dimension X, he could go as the team leader? That was a possibility. Had Leighton done any thinking about any techniques for sending several men through the computer at once? Probably. Leighton tended to think of all sorts of wild hares. And he tended to ask for money to help him chase all of them, too.

But however they were to be used, the new men were badly needed. Sooner or later the combined efforts of J and the Prime Minister would turn them up. And then they would need training. Training of a highly specialized and unorthodox sort. Training which they had not received in their Secret Service or CIA or Special Forces or Royal Marine Commando schools. Nor could they receive it in any of those conventional facilities, without risking compromising Project Dimension X. How do you explain why an agent is being trained in the use of medieval broadsword, longbow, and battleaxe?

So they would need a special training center, one for the Project alone, one where they could learn all the exotic miscellany of skills they would need in Dimension X. J's purchase had just taken care of the land for that. But he would have a good deal more to do before there was a training center out there in Herefordshire. He would need to go over the house and grounds with a fine-tooth comb. Then he would have to confer with Blade, with the best trainers in MI6, with the Project's psychologists. They would all have ideas on what the center would need. He wanted to pick their brains as thoroughly as possible before moving in as much as one stick of furniture.

And perhaps the estate would be good for more than a training center. Every one of Lord Leighton's new ideas meant more paperwork, more office space, more laboratory space. There wasn't much room left in the underground complex below the Tower. What there was, they were reserving for the computer itself. That monster could not be moved at all, at least not without a million-pound bill and a year's delay in the Project. Nor could they expand the complex much farther-at least not without another huge bill. Carving tunnels and chambers out of London's bedrock wasn't cheap.

Moving some of the laboratories and things out to Herefordshire was definitely worth considering. The estate could become a whole annex to the London complex, taking some of the strain off it. Annex West. Yes, that might be a good name. And it certainly was a good idea. It was such a good idea, in fact, that J kept thinking it over all the way back to London.