In his brain the voice spoke again: «Stop now. Try to understand what I say. I depend on you.»

Blade put his hands on his hips and scowled around him. He might be dying of plague — as indeed he was — but the calm assurance, the superiority, of the bodiless voice was beginning to irk him.

«Where are you?» he asked.

Voice: «I am in the tank. As you will see presently. But now that you are here and cannot leave, and must do as I ask, I will take some little time for explanation. The plague will not kill you immediately and I–I have stood my pain for ages. I can bear it a little longer. I would have you understand, Blade.»

Blade put a hand on his sword. «Understand what?»

Voice: «About the Jedds. When they were a great people and ruled the world. Our world. You have seen the robots?»

«I have seen them.»

Voice: «They are part of the joke. A great cosmic joke. It was the old Jedds who invented the robots. But they did their work too well — the robots soon surpassed the Jedds and took over and sent them into exile. Far back in the beginning of time, this was, and ever since the Jedds, the humans, have been trying to find their way back here to the land of the Kropes. For so the robots called themselves. Kropes.»

Blade frowned. He was sick, very sick, yet found himself with the will and strength to grow angry with this voice. Why the anger he could not understand. But it was there. He was beginning to hate.

Blade said: «Why do you tell me all this?»

Voice: «It amuses me. And can do no harm. And I would strike a bargain with you.»

«What sort of bargain?»

«In time — in time. Listen — it was the custom of the Jedds to destroy all their robots when they reached a certain age. They were junked, cannibalized, and new robots made from the parts saved. I, who speak to you now, was a robot and I was in turn discarded and torn apart. But that one time they were careless, the Jedds. My brain was not destroyed as usually was done, the thousands of parts not beaten into a fine powder as was the custom. Instead, a lazy Jedd flung my brain into a pond. I lay in that ooze for centuries and somehow, someway, life came to me. Real life and real intelligence. My own. And I began to grow. I was cunning and I learned how to hide myself. And all the time, over all the long eons, I grew. And at last I had my revenge on the Jedds. I ruled. I invented the Kropes. I built the marvels you have seen. The wall and this tower and all the rest. I built it with my brain. With my will. Are you familiar with the theory of telekinesis, Blade?»

Blade's head was spinning. Fever flamed in him and things began to shift slightly out of focus. He took a firmer grip on himself and answered, «I know the theory. I have never seen it work. To create actual physical things by sheer power of will — by willing them into existence.»

Laughter in his brain. For a moment Blade feared it was his own, the dying manic laughter of plague, then shook it off. He had yet a little time — and in spite of all he still hoped.

Voice: «You have seen it, Blade. Look around you and see it again. But enough — to our bargain!»

«I am sick. Ill. I have a great tumor that is killing me. Even my will cannot cure it. But you, Blade, you with your sword can cut the tumor out and destroy it and I will be well again. You will do this?»

Blade stared defiantly up at the tank. «Why should I?

You are no friend to me. Why should I, who am myself dying, help you to escape death? On the contrary — I would rather have you die. Then the Jedds can come into this land and build it anew for themselves and their children. No. I refuse. You get no help from me.»

A different kind of laughter in his brain now.

Voice: «I said a bargain, Blade. If you help me I will permit the Jedds entrance into my land of Kropes. I will aid them in any manner I can. I will put my robots at their disposal, to do all manner of work, and though I shall rule I will do it with kindness and understanding and the Jedds will remain a free people under their young Empress.»

Mitgu. The Golden Princess. Blade shook his head to clear it. His temples were pounding now, the fever flaring higher, the loathsome buboes growing like vile toads in his groin and armpits. He would never see her again.

He stared at the shining tank. Moisture gleamed and dripped on the metal, a reddish exudation he had not noticed before. Then his own sweat blinded him again.

«And if I do not make this bargain?»

Voice: «I will die in time. But that will be long coming and before I die I will destroy the Jedds. I know your plans, Blade. When two days have passed I will remain quiet and keep my robots immobilized. The Jedds, as agreed, will come into my land. I will permit them beyond the Shining Gate. I will wait. Then I will send the flame and destroy them every one. To the last Jedd child. What do you say to that, Blade?»

Blade wiped sweat from his eyes with trembling fingers and did not answer. The tank was spinning now, before his eyes, like a great centrifuge. He was so damned weak!

Voice: «Do not underestimate my powers, Blade. It was I who sent the plague upon the Jedds, time and again, to keep them weak. It was either that or destroy them utterly, and I am not cruel for cruelty's sake.»

Blade walked to the ladder at the side of the tank. «I will do as you wish.» Fast, now. Quickly. Do not think lest the voice divine those thoughts. Act. Now.

He reached the top of the ladder and stood on the runway surrounding the tank. In the tank, all but submerged in a red liquid that gave off a faint smell of brine, floated the brain. It was the size of a small whale. Blade began to walk around the runway, loosening his sword in its sheath.

The enormous brain nearly filled the tank. The lobes were well demarcated and the convolutions writhed in complex whorls of pink and blue-gray tissue.

Voice: «You see the tumor, Blade?»

He saw it. Springing from the right frontal lobe, rooted deep through the dura mater and into the tender arachnoid and pia mater, was a monstrous and sickly white growth. The tumor was nearly as large as Blade himself. He went farther up the runway to examine it. He had a decision to make and he would get only one chance. Frantically, pushing everything else out of his mind, he strove to remember his anatomy, cursing himself for the many times he had dozed through class at Oxford.

He said, «I see the tumor. It is large and goes deep. Shall I begin now?»

Silence. It drew out. Then the voice said, «Begin.»

Blade drew his sword and leaped from the runway to land on the floating brain. His feet sank a bit into the spongy cortex and he slipped and nearly fell, then regained his footing. He began to make his way slowly toward the ugly mushroom of the tumor, stepping carefully over the deep sulci that separated the convolutions. Suddenly, out of his own memory file, came remembrance of one of Lord Leighton's droning lectures.

Disrupt the axons of the granule cells in the molecular layer.

Blade reached the tumor and stopped. He raised his sword — and hesitated. There was a new flare of pain in his own skull. A different, but familiar pain. Lord L was reaching for him again.

The voice shrieked: «Get on with it. Cut out the tumor, Blade. Cut it out!»

Whatever their barbarities, Blade thought, the Jedds were human. They deserved their chance. This thing, this monstrous pure brain had outgrown all humanity and was, in essence, evil. It deserved to die. It must die.

Blade leaped over the spreading white tumor. With both hands he raised his sword and plunged it deep into soft pink-blue tissue. He cut and slashed and tore, using all his strength, summoning his last energies, and his iron blade ravaged the brain like a wolf might a tender lamb. Sweat poured from him and Blade heard himself cursing. He was knee deep in reddish fluid. He fell and nearly slipped down the lobe into the tank, but recovered by seizing a mass of tissue and digging in with his nails. All the time he was slashing with his sword.