Chapter Three

Blade, naked but for the loincloth, his body smeared with tar grease, sat in what he had come to think of as the «electric chair» and watched Lord Leighton tape the last shiny electrode to his inner calf. Lord L, in a long white surgeon's coat that covered his hump, seemed his usual cheerful and efficient sell. Not exactly a benign type, the old man, but Blade had never thought of him as sinister. Nor did he now. J was upset and nervous over what he imagined Lord L's plans to be.

An hour earlier, in J's cramped office in Copra House in the city, Blade had listened to his chief's suspicions with growing incredulity. J came very near to making Lord L out to be a kind of Dr. Frankenstein.

«I tell you, Dick, he means to get a knife into your brain!» J tapped his pipe nervously on his teeth. «His Lordship isn't satisfied with things as they are, particularly with your memory retention. He won't be satisfied until he works out a means of direct communication with you while you are in Dimension X.»

Blade, who had deposited Viki at her Belgravia apartment half an hour before, kissed her goodbye and given her fanny a last pat — and vowed never to see her again — was feeling very fit. Better than in weeks. Inaction and boredom were at an end. He had peered deep into his psyche and found the cause of his discontent — he was actually looking forward to the new foray into Dimension X. With certain reservations. He was a pitcher that did not intend going to the well forever. He intended, at the proper time, to suggest that they find a new man and begin training him.

This was not the time. He said to J, «I thought my memory cells were functioning excellently. After all the work Lord L has done on them, all the hours I've spent under the chronos machine — and he never said anything to me! Never indicated that he was dissatisfied with the results.»

«He wouldn't. Not to you.» J began to pace his tiny office. «And he won't say anything, not until he is ready. That, I suspect, will be sometime after you get back from this trip through the computer.»

«I'll get back.»

J nodded. «There is always that, of course. But when, if, you get back, then you had better be on your guard, Dick. You know how smarmy, how persuasive, the old man can be. Don't let him talk you into anything. Though even if he does, I—»

J broke off and jammed his pipe fiercely into his tobacco pouch. Blade waited.

«I am,» J continued, «quite prepared to take steps. I will not allow him to tinker with your brain, Richard, in any surgical way. If you haven't the willpower to stand up to him, I, as your commanding officer, can and will forbid it.»

Blade picked up his Burberry and slung it over his shoulder. It was a bleak and drizzling morning. «I think I can handle it,» he assured J as he was leaving. «You should know that, sir. When, to your recollection, was the last time anyone made me do anything I didn't want to do?»

J did not appear reassured. «You don't know that old man as I have come to know him,» he said bitterly. «He is a scientist, not a human being. He will stoop to anything — he'll play on your sense of duty, my boy, on your devotion to England.»

«All that is a bit of old hat now,» said Blade. «But I know what you mean. I'll be careful. You're not coming to the Tower?»

J sank into his swivel chair. «Not this time. No point to it, really. I just stand around outside and worry. I can do that here.»

Blade left with J's usual blessings and luck and took a taxi to the Tower of London. Now, sitting in the chair in the glass booth, deep in the guts of the huge computer, bound like Gulliver with varicolored wires, he watched Lord Leighton fiddle with a series of knobs, toggles and buttons on a large gauge board. This was a new addition and Blade had never seen it before. In another segment of the gray computer housing was the familiar red button, set alone in its plaque and festooned by a hundred wires, that would send Blade into Dimension X.

By now Blade realized that things were different. Lord L was not following the usual routine. As a rule he wasted no time. Like a compassionate executioner who wished to spare his victim the terror of waiting, Lord L would smile, clap Blade on the back and press the button that sent him swirling away. But not this morning.

His Lordship was reading the gauges carefully and making minuscule notes in a large, ledger-like book. He seemed unaware of Blade's presence. He sidled back and forth in front of the instrument board, his polio-ruined legs causing him to lurch and sway like a white, fragile spider. He kept muttering to himself as he made entries in the book. Now and then he reached back to stroke the pain in his hump.

In the minutes of waiting, Richard Blade stumbled on another truth. If the hazardous computer experiments were affecting him, they were, in no less degree if in a different manner, also affecting Lord L and J. Neither man was the same as when this thing had started. Strain, fear, tension, guilt and responsibility all had taken their toll. Odd, Blade thought, that he had not seen it before. But then he had been concentrating on his own woes.

At last Lord L turned from the board and hobbled toward the chair where the naked, electrode-bound Blade waited.

Blade, as usual, was nervous. And when he was nervous he was blunt. «What is it, sir? Something gone wrong?»

The old man did not answer at once. He stared at Blade with his yellow lion's eyes. Through the encompassing walls of the monster computer came, very faintly, the susurration of hundreds of lesser computers in the vast outerchambers. Monitored by men in white smocks who did not dream of what went on in this small inner sanctum.

«Not exactly wrong,» said Lord L at last. He pointed at the gauge board. «It's just that I want to try something new, Richard, a new approach to our work, and I think you should know beforehand.»

Blade looked deep into the yellow eyes. «Does J know about this?»

«No, my boy. J does not know about it. If he did he would only object to it. Make obstacles. And without cause. There is not the slightest danger — other than, er, the usual risks, of course.»

«You had better explain it to me, sir. I'll decide about the risks.»

«Of course, Richard. Of course.»

Lord L flipped open his book and ran a finger beneath a line of what appeared to Blade to be ideograms. Beneath it was a cartouche with a mass of hieroglyphic symbols. Under this was a long column of mathematical abstractions. All Greek to Blade. He waited patiently.

«As you must know,» Lord L said, «I have kept records of each experiment. Extremely detailed and minute records. It has long been in my mind that, if I could achieve a 'fix' on any particular setting, I could use it over and over again. That setting would always be valid and I could send you again and again into the same Dimension X. The advantages of this are obvious, Richard.»

Blade nodded. He could see. One of the great disadvantages of Project DX and one over which the Prime Minister was grumbling — mindful of the millions of pounds being expended — was that they could never be sure into which Dimension X the computer would hurl Blade. In his first four trips out he had landed in a different dimension each time. The first three tunes it had not mattered greatly — he had found nothing of tangible value, nothing that could be exploited to enrich Home Dimension. But on his last expedition, into Sarma, he had found mountains of uranium. Enough, and cheap enough, to make England the leading atomic power in the world. All that was needed was a means of getting it back to Home Dimension, and at this moment in the Scottish Highlands a little band of top scientists was working on teleportation.

His Lordship, as though probing Blade's mind, nodded and showed his long teeth in a smile. «Yes, Richard, I know it is all very much in the future. But the Prime Minister is a practical man. He is a politician, not a scientist, and he has to make an accounting. He thinks it is time we began to show a profit. So with his permission, I might even say his urging, I am trying this new experiment. I am going to try to send you back into X Dimensions that you have visited before. I have selected Alb as the first and have set the computer accordingly.»