Undying World

CHAPTER 1

It was unthinkable that Richard Blade, of all the men in the world, should be impotent. Yet it had happened. He was in the prime of life, with a massive and superbly conditioned body, a keen and highly trained mind, and yet the fact had to be faced-he was a member of the limp phallus club.

He did not believe it at first-could not believe it. Nor could he bring himself to confide in anyone, not even Dr. Saxton Colby, the psychiatrist for Project Dimension X. In any case Dr. Colby-the only medical man in England with a security clearance high enough to enable him to work with the Project-had enough on his mind at the moment. Blade's replacement had gone through the computer once and had returned raving mad. He was now in a sanitarium in Scotland where, as Dr. Colby told J and Lord Leighton, he sat on his bed all day and stared at the wall.

«He repeats,» the doctor said, «one sentence over and over. He never says anything else. Never.»

The worm has a thousand heads. The worm has a thousand heads.

When Lord L and J asked for a prognosis, the doctor had shrugged and had given them a straight answer. «In my opinion the man will never be sane again. He's a vegetable now and he'll remain one. I don't know what he encountered out there in Dimension X, and I don't want to know, but it was horrible enough to drive him right out of his mind. Either that or the computer itself is to blame. The stress of going through the machine, of having the molecular structure of his cortex altered, was enough to send him around the bend.»

J had little to say. He had long been bitterly opposed to the Project. Lord Leighton's viewpoint was different from that of J or Dr. Colby. To the old man it was a simple manifestation of the law of averages. It was bound to happen sooner or later and now it had.

«Most unfortunate,» his Lordship said, «but I refuse to blame myself or the computer. The lad was simply not up to it. I doubt that any man is up to it-with the single exception of Richard Blade.»

Dr. Colby departed to catch a train back to Scotland. J and Lord Leighton were alone in the restricted area of the Tower Computer Complex. His Lordship sat like a gnome behind his old desk, his polio-ruined legs sprawled before him; now and then he rubbed the pain in his humped back. He regarded J with yellow lion eyes in which lurked a question.

«You're not going to mention any of this to the boy?»

Lord L, who was somewhere in his eighties, only referred to Richard Blade as a boy when he was preparing to make a sentimental pitch. J knew this. He narrowed his eyes at the old man. He knew what was coming and he intended to have no part of it, in fact to fight it every step of the way. Blade, whom he loved as his own son, had suffered enough, had done far more than his share in the damnable adventure called Project Dimension X.

But he decided to bide his time. The old man was a formidable opponent and J did not like to confront him except in cases of dire necessity. For the moment he temporized.

«I won't have to tell him anything,» he said. «Richard was there when you brought Dexter back through the computer. He saw the state the man was in, so he must know. Who better? Richard has been out in that hell seven times.»

Lord L opened his mouth, then closed it. He sensed J's mood and decided to alter his tactics. He would, of course, get his way in the end.

«It really is too bad about Dexter,» he said mildly. «Of course he will be taken care of as long as he lives. But I just don't understand it. We must have failed somewhere in the tests-the man had a weakness we didn't detect. Richard never suffered any permanent ill effects.»

J was silent. Lord L doodled on a scrap of paper and sighed. «I suppose we shall just have to begin training another man.» He beamed his sweetest smile at J. «Unless, of course, we can prevail on the boy to-«

J had had enough. The smarmy old bastard. Who in bloody hell did he think he was fooling?

He told the old man to stop using the collective pronoun. «I am not having any part of it,» he said. «Richard is retired, and if I have anything to do with it he's going to stay retired. I know what's going on in that scheming old brain, Leighton, and I will advice Blade against listening to you. I also intend to tell him what happened to Dexter-exactly and in detail-that the man is a hopeless maniac and will never be well again.»

The old boffin did not flare as J expected. Instead he contrived to look hurt but continued to smile. «As though I would ask the lad to come back, after all he has done. You must think of me as an insensitive monster, J, if you believe that. I know the terrors the dear boy has faced on his trips through the computer. I know the dreadful strain he has been under, and that he has discharged his patriotic duty to England many times over. If it were not for the fact that we are so close to a breakthrough in teleportation, actually on the brink of being able to mine DX, to bring back every sort of treasure from DX into our own dimension, I wouldn't dream of even suggesting-«

J could not listen to any more. He placed his Homburg squarely on his head and walked to the door. There he turned and pointed his rolled umbrella at his Lordship like a spear.

«The hell you wouldn't dream of suggesting. You will! And I can't stop you. But I can damn well warn Dick, tell him about that poor fellow up in Scotland and advise him with all my heart not to listen to you.»

After J left, Lord Leighton sat for a moment behind his desk. Presently he got up and paced the office, dragging his feet, rubbing the pain in his hunched back, his eyes half closed. His thin white hair floated like a halo over a pink scalp, giving him a saintly air that was misleading. But he was no sinner, either. He was a scientist, one of the best in the world, and right now he had a job to do.

He hated the necessity of sending Richard Blade to Dimension X again, but how did they expect him to work with imperfect instruments? Other men simply could not do the job, he thought. Why couldn't J understand his position? Why did J insist on making him out to be such an inhumane monster?

He took a list of names from a desk drawer and examined it, ticking off one name after the other. He shook his head. They were all good men-Robbins, Stanbury, Hunt, Swinton, Peterson-all adequately trained and conditioned, as much as any man could be for an adventure in Dimension X. But they all had one fault in common. They lacked perfection. Only Richard Blade was perfect for the job at hand. And they all lacked experience. Only Blade had that, had been through the computer, had survived in Dimension X and had managed to return with his health and sanity. Not that there hadn't been a few complications-there had. No denying the boy had had some bad times. There had been the drinking, the sexual fury, the total blackouts and the bouts of depression. One had to expect that when a brain was exposed to the computer so many times.

Yet the boy had survived. His body was healthy and his mind clear. And he would, if it was put to him the right way, go through the computer again. Of that Lord Leighton was certain.

He picked up a phone and dialed Blade's flat. Let J rant all he liked, he thought, Project DX came first. While he waited, he crumpled the list of names and flung it at a wastebasket. None of them would do. None of them could survive out there. Only Blade could do it.

The phone rang on and on. Lord L scowled. Where could the lad be? He had been calling for a week now, and never any answer. And yet Blade must be in London. He was not a man to disobey orders and it was understood that he was never to leave the city without giving MI6A an address and phone number. In point of fact, Blade was supposed to be on twenty-four-hour call. Lord L knew little of MI6A and cared less. He knew J had been in MI6 before being assigned to Project DX security and, he supposed, that meant that Blade was still some sort of secret agent, and still bound by the agency's rules.

Lord L slammed the phone down. Where in bloody damnation was the lad!

J would know, of course, but then he couldn't very well ask J. The man was dead set against Blade making another trip through the computer. The trouble with J was that he had a bloody father complex.

J did know where Richard Blade was. When he had left Lord L, he took a taxi directly to his own office in Copra House, off Threadneedle Street near Bart Lane, where he was now sitting, reading the report on Blade. For the past month he had had a tail on him.

The first signs of spring had come to London and several of the tall arched windows were open in J's office. A lemony sun drenched the grimy city and there was a subtle difference in the sounds and smells. J paid no attention to it as he pored over the report. He wondered if Blade knew he was being followed? Probably. Blade had been a top operative back before Project DX and he would not have forgotten much. He knew he was being tailed and made no attempt to lose the shadow. He was probably laughing. He just didn't give a damn.

J went to a window and stood staring down into Lothbury. There was a vendor with a mass of yellow crocuses for sale. J flicked the sheaf of paper against his teeth. Blade knew he was being followed, of course, but he must wonder why. Yet he had made no effort to check with J, not even a phone call.

J dialed the number of Blade's flat and listened for five minutes. Same old story-not home… or not answering. He hadn't seen Blade in nearly a fortnight. Blade was avoiding him, but why?

J went over the report again. Same story there, too. Blade was sleeping around-brothels, clubs, bars. When he was in his flat he usually had a woman with him. He wasn't drinking too much, which J supposed was something to be thankful for, but certainly he wasn't living a normal life.

And the doctors! J rifled through the pages of the report. More than a dozen doctors, half of them psychiatrists. Harley Street. Baker Street. Half Moon Street. Even one in Edinburgh. Blade had gone all that way, paid the doctors from his own pocket instead of entering it on his unlimited expense account. Why? What was wrong with Richard Blade?

At the moment Blade was back in Harley Street. He was in the treatment room of a famous specialist and he was also in a bit of a dilemma. He and the specialist, a Dr. Poindexter, were gazing at an X-ray of Blade's skull. The doctor was puzzled and Blade couldn't blame him. That small faint shadow in his left frontal lobe, at the top of his brain in the neocortex, was the thin wafer of crystal implanted some months before so that Blade might receive thought impulses from Home Dimension while he was himself in X Dimension. It had not worked perfectly, there had been lapses, but it hadn't troubled Blade. He had nearly forgotten it was there.

Dr. Poindexter was on it like a hawk. «It could be a tumor,» he said gravely, «though it is early on to be sure. It certainly calls for an exploratory.»

Blade cursed himself for not having foreseen this. He couldn't tell the good man what it was, and he had no intention of allowing his skull to be opened again. Damn security and the Official Secrets Act! There were times when they bound a man like a net of steel cable.

The doctor rubbed his hands. He was cheerful. «Yes, indeed. We shall certainly have to go in there and have a look.»

Blade had been doing a great deal of reading of late. He was not drinking too much, and it had become his habit, after each sexual failure, to go to his flat, lock himself in, and read from a stack of books. Most were overdue and he owed the library a small fortune.

Now, as he prepared for a graceful retreat, he said, «The tumor, whatever it is, seems to be in the wrong part of my brain to be causing my trouble. Sex, as I understand it, is controlled by the paleocortex, what you people call the limbic system. Of course, if it is a tumor (which it wasn't — it was Lord L's damned crystal) I suppose the effect could spread to other parts of my brain?»

Dr. Poindexter looked startled, then frowned. Plainly he did not approve of amateur diagnosticians. He thought again that there was something decidedly odd about this handsome young man with the strange shadow in his brain.

«If you know that much,» the doctor said, «you surely know that all parts of the brain are closely interrelated. And you are right-if it is a tumor and it looks like one, it could certainly affect your sexual drive.»

«That's not quite the problem, Doctor. There's nothing wrong with my sexual drive. If anything, I am in overdrive all the time. The trouble is that when I get right down to it, I can't do anything.»

«Nothing happens at all? Not even a partial erection?»

Blade winced inwardly. It still hurt to admit it, even to a doctor. «Not even that, Doctor. Absolutely nothing.»

Dr. Poindexter was a brain man not a sexologist, but he was interested. He flipped through the papers on his desk. «You're not married, I see. So it probably isn't a question of too much familiarity, of staleness, of a marriage gone sour.»

«It is certainly not that.»

The doctor pursed his lips and stared at Blade. «You have tried, I presume, with more than one… er… partner?»

Blade smiled. «In the last month, Doctor, I have tried it with fourteen partners.»

Dr. Poindexter looked envious. «They were women you desired, that you really wanted? They were attractive? The ambiance-by that I mean the background, the setting and the time, they were all satisfactory? You were not rushed, or hurried, worried?»

Blade grew a little tired of the game. The man couldn't help him, it was obvious. He rose, his broad-shouldered bulk nearly filling the small room, and headed for the door.

«Nothing like that,» he assured the doctor. «Two nights ago I had the most beautiful woman in London naked on a bed. Her husband was in South Africa and the servants had been sent away. Nothing happened, Doctor, absolutely nothing.»

Dr. Poindexter followed him to the door of the treatment room. «It is not, I suppose, a question of alcohol?»

«I think not, Doctor. I have been a heavy drinker in my day, but not now.»

The doctor held the door open. «I could recommend a psychiatrist-«

«Please don't,» said Blade, smiling. «I have been to half-a-dozen already.»

The doctor shook his head. «It wouldn't hurt to see another, you know, several perhaps. Sometimes it is just a question of finding the right man. In the meantime we can't neglect that thing in your brain. I'll set up a hospital date for you. They'll want to run some preliminary tests and-«

«Don't bother just now,» Blade said. «I'll be in touch.» It was a lie-he wasn't coming back.

The doctor sensed the truth and hastened to add, «You just can't neglect it, you know. It won't go away, and it could be dangerous-very dangerous.»

It already has been, thought Blade. The X-rays had been taken by a technician and the doctor had not seen the great slash of scar on his skull, now concealed by his thick dark hair. Nor could the doctor, nor any of the doctors he had seen recently, know how his brain had been tortured and distorted by the computer over the past few years. He could not tell them and they would not have understood. It was a cheat and a waste of money and time, but he was desperate. Anxiety fed on itself and produced a feedback of fear.

Never again to have a woman? Suicide would be preferable.

He extricated himself, paid five guineas, left the aseptic chambers and entered the bright afternoon. London was burgeoning, wrapped in the promise of spring. Blade began to walk, feeling bitter, noting that his shadow was moving along on the opposite sidewalk, a bit ahead of him. Blade did not know the man; J would hardly be so clumsy as to plant a familiar face on his tail. But Blade had made a check of his own. The man was from MI6, right enough, and it was nice of old J to be concerned. It would be better all around, of course, if Blade simply went to his boss and explained.

«Look, J, no need for you to worry. I'm in my right mind. I'm not drinking excessively. I'm in excellent health, certified by six doctors, and I'm worried and scared to death. I cannot achieve a hard-on, J, no matter what. Nothing works. I have had hormones shot into me until my arm looks like an addict's. Still nothing. But it's my worry, not yours, so take your man off and put him to doing something useful.»

Blade could not do that. As he turned at last into Berkeley Street and headed for the Square-dare he keep this third date with Lady Margaret French-Taylor? — he knew that he simply didn't have the courage to confess to J, or to any of his friends, his peers, his own class. Why this should be so, he could not fathom. It was juvenile and stupid. And Blade was not a stupid man. In no sense was he a coward, in either a physical or moral way, yet he admitted to himself that not even under torture would he bring himself to tell another man that he was finished sexually.

He walked through Berkeley Square, thinking that it would be easier to tell the truth to a woman. He very nearly had two days ago. Lady Margaret French-Taylor-Meg to her friends and bedmates was the most beautiful woman in London and she was beginning to suspect. Blade grimaced now as he recalled the scene. He had turned coward at the last moment and pleaded too much brandy and fatigue. Meg had looked skeptical….

«I suppose it's possible, Richard, and yet I find it very strange in a big handsome brute like you. Something is dreadfully wrong. Do you suppose it could be me? Something about me, in your subconscious? You detest me? You don't really want me?» Blade tried to laugh it off and felt like all the fools in the world. «Of course I want you, Meg. I don't love you, and I certainly don't hate you, but I certainly do want you.»

They were sitting at the little bar in her bedroom suite, both naked. Meg French-Taylor was a tall woman, just thirty, with firm high breasts and the long sinuous legs of a dancer. She had an Irish skin, moist and creamy; her mouth was voluptuous and her nose patrician. Before her marriage to doddering old Sir Hugh French-Taylor, she had been plain Maggie Kirkbride. She was a successful model and was seen monthly in the ladies' slick magazines. What the ancient knight contrived to do with her was a puzzle to her friends, as well as to the vulgar public, but she did not enlighten them. The truth was that she had married Sir Hugh for his money; he had married her for her beauty. They had made a bargain, each to go his own way. The knight to pursue his young workmen and waiters, she to quench a sexual appetite that had been long abuilding, for she had been chary of giving herself freely until she had status and money. Now that she had it, and her lawyers had all the proper papers signed by the old man locked in their strongboxes, she had let herself go. She was known as the lay of London and didn't care a whit. There was a lot of the natural aristocrat in Meg and now she could afford to let it show.

So now, as she toyed with Richard Blade's penis and got no response, she was not so much frustrated as puzzled. With her beauty and skills, she would have wagered on provoking a response in any man under eighty. Her husband was seventy-odd and she had stirred him on their first night. It had not happened again because he did not really like women sexually, but it had happened. And now from this gorgeous man, Blade, absolutely nothing.

Blade sipped his brandy and stroked her auburn hair. Meg was trying. She was also getting a bit disgusted with him. He was waiting for the gleam of pity in her green eyes, just as he was waiting for her to unsheath her claws. He did not have long to wait.

Meg stood up. «It is just no use, Richard. You must admit that I have tried. Whatever can it be?»

Blade looked at her over his brandy bell. «I don't know, Meg. I'm sorry. The only thing I know is that it can't be you. It isn't your fault.»

Meg took up her glass. She pressed the brandy bell against one buoyant breast, then against the other. Her rose-pink nipples were hard and long.

«I'm going to have to do something,» she told Blade without looking at him, «or you must do something. I'm all stirred up now and I'll never get to sleep unless something happens.»

Blade was silent. It was an invitation that he did not feel like accepting. He had no objections to oral sex-he was a man of the world and had been a womanizer since his teens — but in this instance it was not the answer. Oral sex, to him, was only an adjunct, a pleasant enough fore-interlude to normal sex. And that he could not achieve. To hell, then, with any of it. Such were his feelings at the moment.

Meg spoke her feelings a moment later. She squinted at him and did not quite mask the pity or the contempt or the anger. It was not anything she could help-she was a woman, a disappointed woman, and she was a feline.

«A big chest, broad shoulders and legs like trees; they don't always tell the story, do they, Richard? But who would have guessed? Certainly I didn't. I thought we were going to have a wizard of a time in bed. Now it turns out that you are less than a man.»

Meg had finished her brandy and gone to the phone. She called a man, someone called Reggie, and spoke briefly. When she hung up she looked coldly at Blade, still at the bar, naked on his stool, hating himself and the world and wondering what had happened to him.

Meg put on a robe. «You had better dress and leave,» she told Blade. «I'm expecting someone. He'll be here soon.»

«So I heard.» He began to dress.

Before he left, Meg patted his cheek and kissed him. She smiled. «Richard, dear, don't be so glum. I'm sorry if I was nasty. But try to see my side-I'm one of those women who just have to have it once I get started. I like you a lot, you're very sweet and we can be good friends, but if you're impotent, incapable of satisfying me, then we had better know it, have it right out in the open and-«

He had almost struck her. Not a slap nor a backhand of contempt or insolence, but a blow of fury.

«I am not impotent,» he had yelled. «I am not incapable. I don't know what has happened, I do not understand, but I am neither of those things. I am not, goddamn it, I am not!»

Meg did not guess how near she was to harm. She put her fingers on his mouth. «Richard, please. The people across the hall-and anyway you may be right. I'll tell you what, darling. We'll try again, shall we? Once more, Richard, and then if nothing happens, at least we'll know that we are not for each other. Now you really must go… my friend will be here soon.»

Blade had slunk away, there was no other word for it, humiliated and disgusted. He drove down to Dorset, to his cottage on the Channel, and spent a night with booze and agony….

A taxi nearly struck Blade as he crossed Davies Street. The driver leaned to shake a fist at the big man. «Why the bleeding 'ell don't yer look where yer going, guv! The bloody effing street ain't no place to go dreaming.»

Blade nodded and waved. The man was right. He turned into Mount Row and headed for Carlos Place. Meg was waiting. She had given him this last chance.

Blade could not understand why he was going back to Meg's place. He was a proud man, even an arrogant man at times, and he had no ill opinion of himself. He had earned every decoration the British Government could bestow; he had seven times faced the terrors of Dimension X and survived; in brain and physique he considered himself the equal of any man in the world.

Yet a limp bit of flesh between his legs was making a fool and a coward of him.

He did not really want to go to Meg's flat. He did not want to see Meg again. Or did he? Was he lying to himself? Did he want to see her, for one purpose-to show her how wrong she was?

He had reached her flat now and stood still, his finger poised over the button, hesitating in the foyer like a school boy about to enter his first brothel. People brushed past him, coming and going, and he did not see them.

Meg had been kindly, but explicit. She could not hide her pity or her disappointment and slight contempt, and Blade was consumed, as he was consumed now, with a baffled rage and hurt and a senseless shame that only a man could know. Nothing helped. Nothing could help or ever would until he was a complete man again.

«We'll try once again,» she had promised. «The third time might be the charm. We will just have to see. And if nothing happens we will just have to say goodbye, Richard, for you will be no good to me. Now go home, love. Rest and don't drink too much. Goodbye. See you in two days.»

Blade raised his finger once more and poised it over the button. One slight pressure and the buzzer would go. Meg was up there waiting. Ultimatum. Third time. Fail three times running and you are out. Rules of the game.

He watched his reflection in the brassy mirror of the mailboxes. He looked the same. Handsome by conventional standards-he had no false modesty-a big stalwart young man in the peak of condition. The face he shaved every morning, the body he lived in, bathed each day, took meticulous care of. What had happened to him? Where had it all gone wrong?

A girl said, «Excuse me, please.»

He moved aside to let her snap open her mailbox. She gave him a sideways look of approval. A bright little brunette bird, a sharp and pretty nose, mini-skirted, legs glistening and sending a waft of clean flesh and perfume to him. Blade smiled faintly, but did not speak. She fumbled with her key, taking longer than necessary. Blade watched her, again slowly raising his finger to the button of Meg's flat. The girl got the door open, shot an open glance of invitation at Blade, then let the door shut behind her. There was disappointment in the wobble of her trim buttocks as she disappeared down a corridor.

Blade's finger hovered over the button. He could not press it. He was well over six feet, two hundred twenty pounds of muscle, and he lacked strength to move his finger a quarter of an inch. He left the foyer.

Coward!

He knew then what he was going to do. The man in Edinburgh had told him: «In some cases of psychological impotence, and I think yours falls into that category, cures have been effected by a complete change in environment. I know it works in some cases, though not all.»

Blade, remembering in the taxi, smiled. He had said, «You mean take a long sea voyage?»

The Edinburgh doctor was an American, Harvard Med, who for family reasons had settled in Scotland. He had grinned at Blade and told him, «The sea voyage bit is Victorian, but that isn't what I meant. When I said a change of environment I meant a real change in environment. New job, new friends, new hobbies, new country if possible, new every damned thing as near as you can come to it.»

The taxi stopped outside the Tower. As he paid the man, Blade glanced back. J's man was also paying a cabby. Blade smiled. Within a few minutes now J would know where he was, and J would come running. J would suspect what he was about to do and J was not going to like it. J was dead set against Blade going through the computer again.

So was Blade, for that matter. Or had been. Now he had changed his mind. A complete and absolute change in environment?

The doctor in Edingburgh, all unsuspecting, might have been talking about Dimension X.

Lord Leighton, in a very few minutes now, was going to be very pleased. Blade did not give a damn one way or the other. The computer, he knew, had somehow bitched him up-was responsible for his impotency. He knew he would find danger out there-fear and suffering-and he might not make it back, but at the moment he was not in a mood to worry about that. With an older man it might be different, but he was a strong young animal and he could not go on living this sexless existence. Better Dimension X, whatever the hazards.