«Of course you don't, Richard. Nothing to bother your head about. But we can't stand still, you know. We must progress, always progress. You will have noted that I am using forty electrodes this time instead of thirty?»
Blade had noted.
Lord L finished a girdle of electrodes around Blade's narrow waist. «I may let you remain in Dimension X a bit longer this time, Richard. I said nothing to J about it, because he is turning into a nervous old maid, but you have a right to know.»
«How much longer, sir?»
He could not see His Lordship's face. The old man was behind him, taping electrodes to the small of his back.
«Not too long,» he said cheerfully. «But a bit longer than you have been staying. Give you a chance to explore and accomplish more, eh? Of course we can't know, other than a priori, just what sort of time scale you will encounter out there. But in terms of Home Dimension time I plan to keep you out at least two months. You have no objections?»
Ensnared as he was, caught in a net of wires and electrodes, Blade could do nothing but laugh at the question. «No objections, sir.»
«Good-good. Fine. J will worry and call me names, as usual, but I'll handle him. There, just about ready. Let's run through the briefing one last time, my boy. I know it is all very old hat by now, but to humor me we'll just run through the checklist. Right.»
Lord L ticked off the points on a clip board as Blade ran through them. Emergency measures, bow to best preserve his brain potential, optimum conditions for a computer recall. Blade knew them all by heart and had never had to use any of them.
The old scientist made a final tick on the list and put down the board. «We are set, then. Just remember that you cjo not have to make an effort to consciously remember. None at all. Your sessions with the chronos computer, and the magnesium pemoline, will take care of that. You will remember, just as you always have. Your brain protein synthesis has been doubled. When you get back we'll put you into hypnosis and drain it all out of you.»
Lord Leighton hobbled back toward the instrument console. Blade watched his gnarled old hand reach for the red enameled switch. The fear was gripping him now and, though he made no sign, his guts were a mass of ice. There would be pain. There would be madness. He was, once again, on the brink of the unknowable and unthinkable-until that switch closed and his brain cells dissolved and flowed and ran molten into some new matrix that would restructure them. It would be a new and different brain and it would perceive a new and different world.
Only he, Richard Blade, was blessed and cursed in this fashion. Of all the trillions who had lived and died on this tiny capsule called Earth, this spaceship careering out of nothing into nowhere, only Blade had been granted the miracle-that he for a time escape, that he see beyond the veil.
Lord Leighton smiled and waved a hand. «Good luck, my boy. Take every care.»
The switch closed.
Blade felt his eyes popping out as a thousand gallons of blood was pumped into his head. Lord L was a white scrawl on a blackboard and a giant eraser whisked him away. Blade felt his blood harden into raw red stuff, a conduit for the current that invaded him. Suddenly he was very small, a micro-man, and he was scooped up and attached to a whirring dynamo wheel. Around and around and around and around-he was doing 5000 rpm.
The giant bloody-pawed rat came out of a Hansel and Gretel house and laughed at Blade. The rat knelt and raised his scarlet paws in prayer. Blade, still tiny, saw that the rat was wearing a saddle. It wished to be ridden. Blade vaulted into the saddle.
The rat changed into a gigantic black steed, pawing air and snorting fire. Blade was riding, riding, riding. He looked back and saw his followers: millions of them, millions of Blades, all himself and all on black chargers.
Blade raised his sword, so long it touched the sun, and shouted into the black rushing wind. «Chargel»
Eternal winds caught the word and hurled it back to the horde behind him and he heard the million echoes: «Charge-charge-charge-charge-charge-«
He lost his seat on the black steed and fell. And fell. And fell. He was in a sunny meadow, unhurt, already forgetting, hearing the sound of running water and consumed by a great thirst. He saw a brook and ran toward it. As he was about to drink, the brook changed into a girl, a slim and red-upped girl and Blade kissed her and found her lips made of salt and there was no surcease for his thirst. The girl changed into a cat and clawed his face and leaped away from him, spitting.
Blade began to cry. He found a leaf and formed it into a cup and cried into it. When it was full. he drank his own tears.
There came a terrible sound, a hissing and crackling and screaming. A wall of fire rushed toward him. The fire encircled him and began to close in, compressing him into an even smaller space. As the wall of flame drew nearer he saw that it was composed of thousands and thousands of individual fires. People. Men and women and children.
Each aflame, each pointing burning fingers at Blade, each screaming oaths at him with fiery tongues.
There was a stench of hell. Blade began to burn. He watched, feeling no pain, as his feet charred and turned black. On came the flame wall, to consume him, consume him ….
CHAPTER 3
Flame. Smoke, pungent and stinging in his eyes and nostrils, making him cough and retch. Blade, stupefied, his head a mass of pain, opened his eyes and saw fire devouring wooden beams high above him. He lay on hot stone, the floor of a vast, arching, groined structure that could only be a temple of some sort. A temple now dedicated to fire and smoke and the cries of men and women being put to the sword.
Blade, naked and unarmed, stunned by the trip through the computer, managed to raise himself on an elbow. Never before had he been so weakened physically, so nearly paralyzed, by the electronic restructuring of his brain cells. He was in Dimension X again, but nearly as weak as a babe and in, imminent danger of being either burnt alive or crushed.
He saw a rafter sag and begin to peel away from the dome directly over him. Blade rolled, scrabbled on. his hands and knees, clawing frantically through debris. He pawed over a dead man, then another, and a man and woman locked in a final embrace. The rafter tore away and came crashing down with a thunderous explosion of smoke and fiery splinters. Blade huddled behind another corpse as the flaming shards rained about him. He felt his strength returning. None too soon. He had to get the hell out of this mess, and fast.
Somewhere near him a woman screamed. Blade got unsteadily to his feet and peered around through the dense curtain of smoke. He saw a sword near the hand of the corpse that had sheltered him just now, and he picked it up in a reflex action. Somewhere in the smoke the woman screamed again, a high keen of agony and terror. Blade, the sword out-thrust before him, stumbled in the direction of the sound. He was conscious now of another sound, one that came from outside the temple; a mob roar, an all-pervading tumult composed of many lesser chords, all of. them unpleasant and threatening: the clash of metal on mtal, men gurgling in death and laughing in triumph, women weeping and children crying, victors' shouts and losers' moans-and always the sinister, obbligato of consuming fire.
The woman screamed a third time. This time the cry ended in words. «Juna help me-Juna save me-JunaJuna-Ahhhhhhheeeeeee»
Blade had the sound pinpointed now. He reeled through a veil of smoke and saw them on the great stone altar. It was rape. Rape in progress. Still the woman struggled and fought, trying to elude her tormentor. Blade ran, the sword poised.