They passed what sounded like a fountain falling into a basin. These must be extensive gardens, harem gardens, and the position was bound to be a bit exposed. Blade sucked away and fondled that lovely breast and hoped and even prayed a little that Valli knew what she was doing and that she was lucky. He began to wish her on-hide me. Hide me quickly. Hurry. Hide me.

He needed time. How much time he did not know exactly, but some. He was beginning to grow. Not much, very slowly as yet, but he could feel the tingle and the surge in his small body. It was like a spreading itch and more an indication of growth to come than any actual physical change at the moment.

Blade knew this. The crystal in his brain was working. Faint, faltering, imperfect and fading, the computer was feeding him thought impulses. Lord L and J knew of his situation and were trying to do something about it.

What they could do, if anything, Blade had not the slightest idea. But he was growing. No doubt of it. And that would create new problems. Blade sucked at the last of Valli's milk. He would need all his strength.

Chapter 4

And so it was that Richard Blade came to the Land of Zir. Valli hid him in a pavilion in a deserted reach of the harem grounds. She put him in a closet there and swaddled him in rugs and contrived to bring him milk in bottles. Valli dared not trust any other woman or guard with her secret and so had to leave him alone for long periods. This was a great worry to the woman and none at all to Blade. His strength increased by the hour and soon he could open the closet door and crawl all about the ornate pavilion. On the second day he was walking, on the third striding, and on the fourth day he could run. His hair began to come in thick and dark.

He kept all this from Valli. She held him and gave him the bottle and marveled at how he grew, but in no way did she suspect the truth. Blade knew that he would have to tell her soon. She was the only friend he had, still the only means of his survival, and he spent long hours in pondering just how to go about breaking the news to her. He must not frighten her, or shock her into uselessness. Beyond his self-interest was his real fondness for the woman. Valli was, after all, the nearest thing he had to a mother for many years. But there was the mission to get on with.

The crystal told him that Lord L knew of his predicament and that it could be remedied on the instant that his Lordship worked out some intricate calculations and translated them for encodement into computer macroergs.

It took the crystal, wavering and fading and imperfect, many hours to get this telecommunication through to Blade; when he realized what Lord L was up to he was badly upset and sought to send a message, by fierce concentration, that Lord L hold back. Blade wanted a full month to grow in. He had a plan. A plan that would be ruined if he suddenly regained his adult stature and strength. He was greatly relieved when the thought came, crystal inspired, that his Lordship understood and would do as Blade wished.

Meantime he learned much of this new dimension. He hid and listened as various women came, always women in pairs or sometimes threes or fours, and used the pavilion as a place of assignation for Lesbian love. The Izmir of Zir was an old man, mostly impotent and with bad breath, and there were five hundred women in his harem. Small wonder, Blade conceded as he lurked and watched, that they sought out the pavilion to writhe on the divans and use their bodies and artificial phalli to gain relief. There was, it seemed, a death penalty for such behavior.

There seemed to be a great many death penalties in Zir, and this was a paradox, for outwardly it was a land of milk and honey, with the air warm and fragrant and the sun golden. Blade did not dare venture beyond the pavilion, but he sometimes watched from an open window and was impressed by the beauty of the great park in which the harem stood. There were cunningly clipped trees and flowering shrubs and flitting birds and song and splashing water everywhere. Graveled paths led through mazes of high-growing hedges.

Only once did he see any of the guards, two large men with hard, brute faces who wore baggy pants and beaded vests and carried both sword and spear. They passed near the pavilion, hardly glancing in its direction, and Blade retired to his closet and hid for an hour. He could not stand up to such men yet. Not for a month.

On the evening of the sixth day Blade knew that it was time to speak to Valli. She had been ohhing and ahhing about his rate of growth and he sensed an uneasiness, a fear, in her. His foster mother, in short, was beginning to suspect that something was very wrong.

It was dark when she came to the pavilion. The gardens were bright with hanging lanterns. She put her can of milk on a table and came to the closet where Blade lay in his swaddle of rugs. As she lifted him and carried him into an anteroom she said, «What a little giant you are becoming, my sweet. So heavy. Surely there was never a baby like you before in all the world. I am beginning to think that Stel was right and that you are a monster-child-«

«Stel was wrong,» said Blade. «I am not a monster, Valli. I am a full-grown man caught in a baby's body. You must not be frightened and-«

He might have expected it. Valli fainted dead away. She dropped him and Blade had to twist in midair to land on his hands and feet. He swore mightily and, mindful of his hunger, drank the milk down before he filled the can with water and splashed it into Valli's face. He knelt beside her and chafed her wrists and patted her cheeks and hoped for the best. If she lost her wits and ran screaming into the night he was going to be in a lot of trouble. He could not yet fend for himself. He needed Valli as much as ever.

There was one dim light in the anteroom. Valli's eyes fluttered open, black and luminous and huge, and she stared at the baby Blade. He smiled. She continued to stare. «I–I had a dream, a nightmare, I know not. But I thought you spoke to me, child. I thought you spoke with the voice of a man.»

Blade patted her hand. «I did. I am a man, Valli. Do not be afraid of me. I will never harm you. Just listen and try to understand.»

For a moment he thought she would faint again. Impulse bade him lean close and kiss her cheek. «You see, Valli. I love you. I will not harm you. You are still my mother.»

Valli moaned and lay back and closed her eyes. «I have gone mad. I am being punished for breaking the laws of Zir. I will be chained and whipped and my head will be cut off.»

Blade crouched beside her. «None of those things will happen. I will not let them happen. Now you must lie very still and listen closely and try to understand.»

«I understand nothing,» sobbed Valli. «I am a madwoman.»

Blade patted her hand. «Listen. I have come from a far place, a land of which you in Zir have never dreamed. I am a full-grown man and should have come as such, but a mistake was made and I came as a babe. But this mistake is being corrected-in a month I shall be a man again. Until that time I need you, Valli. I need your protection and your help and your knowledge of Zir. Do this for me and when I have my strength-I have never lost my wits-you will profit by it. That I promise. Anything you desire will be yours-you have only to ask.»

Valli had ceased to tremble. She half opened her eyes and peered up at him. «You are a demon, then? A wizard? A magician?»

Blade laughed. «None of those things, Or all of them, if it will please you. But for now you must think of me as a man in a baby's body. In a month I will be fully grown. It is that month that we must be concerned with-I must survive it. And we must use the time to plan, to scheme, to accomplish matters of which I will speak later. Now, does all this still frighten you? Do you begin to see, to understand?»