Undying World

CHAPTER 3

Blade awoke. As usual, after he came through the computer, he was naked. He lay unmoving, alert, letting the head pains subside, doing nothing to attract attention or endanger himself. After a time he became aware of the silence. A silence he had never known before. Absolute silence.

Blade moved his head slightly. He seemed to be lying in a park of sorts, on artificial turf, and he got the impression that the plants and bushes and trees were made of plastic. Nothing moved. There was no wind. And that absolute, total, deadly silence. He brushed his hand over the turf and the sound was magnified a hundred times, sounding like a man walking through tall grass.

He could sense no danger. After so many times through the computer, he now adapted almost instantly to conditions in Dimension X. Had there been danger he would have known it. Slowly he got to his feet, searching for the source of light that tossed a bright, yet lambent glow over everything. It was as bright as a soft and cloudy day, and yet he could have sworn that it was not day. As he turned he saw it. The gigantic moon hanging in the sky.

Blade lunged for a clump of bushes-they were plastic and sought to hide himself from that moon. Now his instincts shouted danger and he reacted.

He lay on his back, peering up through a slit in the plastic fronds, and studied the moon. He was impressed and even a bit awed, he who had seen so many fantastic sights and braved so many dangers in so many weird dimensions.

Blade made an instant calculation. Put that gigantic silver orb into HD ratio and it would not be fifty thousand miles from Earth. He could see cities and lakes and mountains and rivers; he could see canals and docks and ships; in the cities he could pick out some large individual buildings. He could see traffic moving, cars of some sort; he could make out what could only be an airport with planes landing and taking off.

Then he saw something else. Light towers, they must be tremendous structures, hundreds of feet high, from which huge spotlights were beamed on this place where he now was. There was the danger. He felt it. There were watchers up there. From now on he must keep under cover as much as possible. The chances were good that he had not been spotted, at least fifty-fifty, but he must take every precaution until he understood more about the situation. They might be friendly. He might want to seek out that great moon-if only to get away from the silence that was already beginning to get on his nerves. But that could wait. He had to explore his present world first.

As long as he remained in the park, in the shelter of the trees, he should be safe. Blade began to move cautiously through the plastic shrubbery. He needed clothing and a weapon. Soon he would need food and water.

Blade stumbled over the love-making couple. Back in Home Dimension, it would have been funny, in DX it could mean his life. Blade whirled in a defensive crouch, snarling like an animal, the sound ripping the silence to bits. He was ready for battle. You did not bother about polite apologies in DX. If the man, angry at being disturbed at his love-making, came at him with a weapon,nBlade meant to take it away from him. He needed a weapon and-

Blade sensed something was wrong, or right from his point of view, and when he heard his own breath rasping, he realized what it was. Only he was breaking the silence. They had not made a sound. And nobody, not in any dimension, could make love without making some sound, some little noise.

And they did not move.

It struck Blade that they were afraid of him, were cringing in terror-stricken silence. No. It was not that kind of silence. It was the vast and all-pervading silence that only he was disturbing. These people, this pair of lovers, were not alive.

Corpses in a plastic park?

Blade crept to them. He had been assuming, from the situation, that they were lovers. He could be wrong about that. Have a look, he thought, but first try speech. What in the hell did you say in a situation like this?

He whispered: «Don't be afraid. I don't harm you.»

His whisper sounded as if it were roaring from an amplifier. Damn this eerie silence.

No answer. He had not expected any. He was beside them now, vague forms in the silver light that was leaking through a canopy of tree branches. Now he could see them plainly. It was a man and a woman and they had been making love. They still were, in a way, though they did not move. They must have died in the very act.

Blade crept closer and studied them carefully. Were they dead or in some strange coma or trance? They looked alive in every detail but one-they did not move. They were unaware of his presence. They were like store dummies arranged in the act of love.

Dummies? Manikins? Blade reached out and touched the woman's leg. It had the texture of real and living flesh and yet not quite. She did not move at his touch, she did not breathe, she was dead. Yet there was no sense of real death, no stench, no corruption.

Blade looked about. Nearby was a path canopied by the high plastic trees. There was light enough to see and yet not be seen from that terrible moon that looked as though it might come crashing down any moment. He grabbed the man by the ankle and dragged him to the path. Always the gentleman, Blade thought grimly, even in Dimension X.

He stretched the body full in the light and began to study it carefully. The first thing that struck him was the beauty, for mere handsome would not do in this case, of the man. He was small in build, but perfectly proportioned. He looked about thirty in HD years and his skin was fine and beardless, his features perfection with a straight nose, well-formed mouth and small ears set close to his head. His eyes were open and staring at Blade, and for a moment life seemed to flicker in them. Blade put his ear to the man's chest and could have sworn that the smooth and hairless flesh was warm. Blade hunkered back in absolute puzzlement. He had run into some weird things in the various dimensions he had visited, but this one was-

Blade saw it then. Light glinted from something just behind and slightly above the man's right ear. Blade reached to touch it. It was a metal stud, thickish and about a half-inch long. Cold to his touch. An antenna. Obviously a means of receiving power. This was not a true man. This was a robot.

Richard Blade laughed, the sound loon-like, maniacal in the silence, and went back for the lady. No need to be a gentleman now. These were not dead people but merely depowered robots. Robots that had been making love in a park and had been cut off in the act.

The woman was lovely, a bit smaller in stature than the man, slim, well fashioned and with a fresh clear skin. She was about the same age as the man, thirty or so. She wore a miniskirt of plastic and a bra of the same material. The bra had been slipped up, still clipped at the back, to expose her fine small breasts. Nearby lay a pair of brief underpants. Behind her right ear was the same metal stud he had found on the man. Surely a means of receiving power, Blade thought, but more and more he was doubting the robot theory.

It was the small bandage and the wound beneath it that confused him. When he dragged the woman back to the path and stretched her out beside the man he spotted the bandage and removed it. The wound had been stitched and was beginning to scab over. Blade plucked away a bit of the scab to reveal pink new tissue. What sort of robots could be wounded like any mortal and heal the same way?

He began to go over the bodies again, this time with extreme care. The hair, brown in both cases, was silky and fine and had the same texture as his own. Goddamn it! Blade grew more puzzled and exasperated. Robots or humans… something between the two?

He could not figure it out. They were dead and not dead, human and not human, robots and not robots. Time to get on, to look elsewhere, to explore and seek for answers.

The man wore a light sleeveless jacket and a pair of what in Home Dimension would have been called Bermuda shorts. Both of the garments were of the same plastic material, as was the sandal-like footgear. Blade stripped the jacket from the man, tried it on and then tossed it away in disgust. It was far too small. He would have to look elsewhere for clothes. The man, he noticed, had no trace of chest hair.

Blade stared down at the couple with his chin in hand. They were both beautiful people-that had to be admitted; he wondered what had happened to them. If they were dead it was indeed a strange death, without corruption or decay, for the dying had not dimmed their eyes or distorted their faces. He shook his head. Perhaps they only slept.

Sleepers. The word suited. He nodded again and went on about his dangerous business.