Kingdom of Royth

Blade 9

by Jeffrey Lord

CHAPTER 1

The official Rolls-Royce carrying J toward the Tower of London was not quite like the advertisements-so quiet that all he could hear was the ticking of the electric clock. But it was almost that quiet, and otherwise there were only faint traffic noises outside. It was eleven o'clock on a spring night, and London was either going to sleep or already asleep.

J would normally have been in bed and asleep also. Part of his rise to the position of head of the special intelligence branch MI6 was the result of years of rising early, not only before the dawn but before his rivals (and his enemies). But tonight Richard Blade was being hurled through Lord Leighton's gigantic computer on his ninth journey into Dimension X. J would sooner have violated the Official Secrets Act than not be on hand when his best agent-almost like a son to him was hurled off into some fantastic other world to live or die by his own quick wits and superb physical prowess.

Blade had made the same journey eight times. The first time it had been by accident, when an experiment indirectly linking one of Lord Leighton's earlier computers to Blade's mind has gone spectacularly awry. The remaining times, however, his journeys had been part of a deliberately contrived project to explore what was now called Dimension X, for the benefit of England. Over the short time of its existence, Project Dimension X had grown from a bee in Lord Leighton's white-haired bonnet to a massive undertaking housed in a self-contained complex more than two hundred feet below the Tower. Its financing swallowed money to the tune of better than half a million pounds a year. It drew on the talents of some thirty of England's most brilliant men-scientists, engineers, psychologists-without letting them know what they were serving. Only four people in the whole world-J hoped-knew full details. Blade, Lord Leighton, the Prime Minister, and J himself.

In spite of the Prime Minister's generosity with priorities, financing, and staffing, Project Dimension X still had a weak point. That weak point was Richard Blade himself. J grinned wryly at the notion of Blade, with his mind and body and experience, being a «weak point.» Then the grin faded.

It was true. Dimension X could not be explored or exploited without somebody going through the computer. So far, the only person able to go through the computer and return alive and sane was Blade himself. One other man had tried; he had returned permanently insane. A dozen others had been considered; all had been rejected. All fell short of Blade's perfection.

But however perfect Blade might be, there was a limit to what he could take. Sooner or later his brain would suffer major damage from too much stress placed on it too often by the computer. Even worse, somewhere out in Dimension X his mighty strength might not be great enough, his lightning reflexes not fast enough, and he would not come back at all.

It was absolutely necessary to find at least one other man, and preferably several, who could survive a trip into Dimension X, both physically and mentally. They needed to take the strain off Blade for his sake. Even more, if he cracked or vanished before they found somebody else, the whole Dimension X project would come to a standstill, possibly for good. That would benefit nobody and nothing.

All of which explained why J was in the official Rolls-Royce heading into London. An hour ago he had been high over the Atlantic in an airliner. To all eyes he had been a tall, elderly impeccably Establishment businessman or civil servant. He had just completed a mission to Washington, a mission personally ordered by the Prime Minister. He had been discreetly inquiring of the Americans whether they had any good agents that might be available for a joint Anglo-American project. Making the inquiries widely enough to get useful information but not so widely that American curiosity was aroused and they started inquiring in their turn had been one of the most delicate jobs of J's whole career. He thought it had gone well. At any rate, he already had seven names and the promise of a thorough search of the staffs of American intelligence agencies for more. Between that and the Prime Minister's equally discreet inquiries in England's armed forces, something should turn up.

Of course, it would be preferable for the Project to remain an all-British affair. If the Americans provided men, they would also be sure to demand a share of any benefits from the Project. But even dividing the benefits with the Americans was preferable to suspending the Project entirely. And it was even more preferable to keeping it going with Blade alone until it destroyed him.

J caught himself. Was he thinking too much of saving Blade and not enough of their common duty to England? If he was, it was time to face the fact that he was getting old and hand over his job to a younger, more dispassionate man. Then he remembered that even if he retired as chief of M16, he would still be involved with Project Dimension X. The Prime Minister had specifically asked him to stay on even after retirement as the Government's representative with the Project. He had agreed. The Prime Minister had tried to present this as a high honor, and J supposed that in a way it was. But, and here he grinned again, it was also an easy way of saving the Prime Minister from having to deal directly with Lord Leighton very often. Leighton might be England's most brilliant scientist, and he might have forgotten more about computers than any other five men in the world had learned. But that didn't make him any less eccentric, irritable, or maddeningly difficult to work with.

J was still running futures-Blade's, his own, and the Project's-back and forth in his mind when the Rolls drew up at the entrance to the Tower. He climbed out, then smiled broadly as a tall figure with an escort of dour Special Branch men loomed up out of the darkness. It was very decent of Richard to come out to meet him here on the surface, even though they couldn't exchange any serious words until they had left the escort behind.

They did that at the massive, gleaming bronze doors marking the head of the elevator shaft down to the complex far below. The door swished shut behind them and the elevator began its unnerving plunge downwards. J turned to Blade and thrust out his hand.

«How are you; Richard? I'm sorry I couldn't get back until just now. I wouldn't have been able to do even that if the P.M. hadn't sent an official car out to the airport for me.»

Blade grinned and took the offered hand in a strong grasp. «It wouldn't have mattered. Lord Leighton said we were going to wait before starting the sequence until you arrived, however long that might be.»

«Well, I'll be damned!» J's eyebrows rose. «I'm almost prepared to believe that Lord L is developing some human feelings at last.»

«Quite possibly. He-«Blade was interrupted as the elevator sighed to a stop. The doors slid open, revealing the familiar long corridor stretching away under the lights.

As they stepped from the elevator, Lord Leighton popped out of a side door like the White Rabbit. He looked even more like an industrious gnome than usual as he scuttled ahead of them down the corridor on his polio-twisted legs. His hunchbacked body bounced inside the grimy white laboratory smock. As they moved along through the familiar series of electronically guarded doors, he kept up a cheerful stream of comment.

«Very glad you could get back in time, J. Richard knew you'd want to be around for the send-off; talked my arm and half my leg off persuading me to wait. No good reason not to, of course. We can start the main sequence any time we choose. The problem's always going to be making adjustments once the sequence is started. So far we haven't had any malfunctions in the middle. We'll have to make some modifications in the sequencing procedure, though. Put in a provision for «holds» like the Americans use on their space launches. Don't want to put Richard halfway into Dimension X and leave half of him here, do we?»