Doubtless this was a caricature, no more accurate than wartime caricatures usually were. But Blade still found it intensely interesting, as an example of how the people of Englor saw the Red Flames of Russland, their enemies.
There was also something uncannily familiar about the poster. The rifle the Red Flame soldier was carrying seemed an exact duplicate of the AK-47, the standard assault rifle of the infantry formations of the Soviet Army! Another weird echo from Home Dimension.
On the wall directly behind the duty constable's desk hung a framed photograph, in the place where the portrait of the Queen hung in the police stations of Home Dimension. This photograph showed the head and shoulders of a man of about fifty, with dark hair going gray and a full beard. His face was square but fine-featured. He appeared to be wearing a military uniform tunic of some sort, dark blue gray with small shoulder straps and a high collar stiff with gold lace.
On the bottom of the frame was a small brass plate, and on it was engraved:
His Imperial Majesty Charles VI, Emperor and Supreme Protector of Englor
Blade's night in jail passed quietly, except for one noisy moment when a particularly quarrelsome drunk was brought in and deposited in the next cell. Morning came, a breakfast of coffee and sticky porridge came with it, and after breakfast two more police officers to escort Blade before the magistrate. He was given underwear, shoes, and a patched prison coverall. Then they hustled him into the same van that had brought him in last night and drove off.
Blade's was the first case on the morning's docket. Either the magistrate had a busy morning ahead or he didn't believe in wasting words. He was brisk, businesslike, thoroughly unsympathetic, and almost painfully precise in his speech and movements. Blade wondered if he starched his wig each night, to keep it so rigidly immobile above his long, thin face.
«Your offense is a serious one, sir. It shows a lack of any sense of decency or consideration for others. Such a lack is particularly reprehensible at the present time, when the Empire needs the most and the best that every man and woman can give.»
The magistrate drew some papers toward him and cleared his throat. «Normally, I would impose the maximum sentence of ninety days without the option of a fine. However, you have not aggravated your offense by drunkenness, destruction of property, or resisting the arresting officers. You also appear to be an able-bodied and alert man.
«Therefore, I am going to offer you the option of enlistment in His Imperial Majesty's Armed Forces. If you volunteer, I will consider remitting half the sentence. If you are accepted for enlistment, the sentence will be entirely remitted. I shall also direct that your offense be stricken from the records, so that you may enter His Majesty's service without any stain upon your character.»
The offer was an agreeable surprise to Blade, for several reasons. It gave him the chance to do something with his time in this Dimension, other than spending most of it doing whatever petty criminals did in Englor's jails. In fact, it gave him one of the best opportunities to study this Dimension that he could hope for, and above all to study its technology. With war hanging over the Empire, the armed forces would be getting the best its scientists and factories could produce, and as fast as possible.
There was a final reason why the offer was good news for Blade. It suggested that no one saw anything unusual or mysterious about his sudden appearance in the park, stark naked and in broad daylight. They might think he was not quite right in the head, but certainly no one seemed to be considering him a «man from nowhere,» whose origins required a full-scale investigation. They seemed to be taking it for granted that he belonged here.
Enlistment in the armed forces wouldn't be all good news, of course. There would be all sorts of tests. There would also be an investigation into his background that might be sufficient to make someone suspicious.
Once he was in the army, there would be the usual boredom and idiocy of basic training. Even after that, he would not be as well off in Englor's army as he had been in a number of less civilized forces over the years. In civilized armies there was no chance to rise from private to general by catching the eye of the ruler or the ruler's wife. Without any education that he could prove, he would probably have trouble even getting a commission. He would very likely spend the war as a private or a corporal, and possibly without even a chance to distinguish himself in combat.
There was nothing he could do about any of this, however. He'd been given the best chance he was likely to get, and the only thing to do was take it.
The magistrate was staring hard at Blade, obviously waiting for an answer. Blade raised his eyes, met the magistrate's gaze, and said quietly, «My lord, I volunteer for His Imperial Majesty's Armed Forces.»
Chapter 4
Blade passed all the physical and mental tests with flying colors. In fact he held himself back on all of them to avoid doing well enough to cause comment.
He was able to manage fairly well in presenting himself as a man without any past that needed to be checked out. He claimed to be a foundling with no known relatives, no friends, and no fixed place of residence for a good many years into the past. That still didn't account for a good many things, among them his excellent physical condition and the impressive array of scars on his body.
The induction officers and sergeants must have occasionally wondered about Blade, but they kept their wonderings to themselves. Blade thought he knew why. In the first place, any man so obviously fit and ready for service was a gift horse a wise man wouldn't look in the mouth. With war imminent, the officers and sergeants knew they'd be taking the lame and the feeble-witted before long. Richard Blade was one of the finest pieces of raw material anyone could hope for.
In the second place, the recent history of this Dimension offered a plausible explanation for Blade's skills, scars, and obscure past. Russland, the great enemy, had absorbed a number of small countries along its borders in the past two generations. In some of those countries, there had been little colonies of Imperial subjects. Many of them had been born in those countries and lived all their lives there.
When the Red Flames of Russland moved in, most of those from Englor died-killed in the fighting, executed, or starved and tortured to death in concentration camps. Those who survived lost homes and families and had to flee for their lives, suffering ordeals often too nightmarish to retell. A few of the bolder spirits remained behind and joined the guerrillas and underground movements in the various countries. Over the years, these became among the most formidable fighting men in the whole Dimension.
After a few days, Blade understood that he was generally assumed to be one of these ex-guerrillas. No one ever asked him directly, so he never had to give any specific information. He merely had to look reasonably wise when the history of those unhappy countries that were now Red Flame satellites was discussed.
Blade was tested and passed as fit for service at an induction center on the outskirts of London. Then he and thirty other recruits piled aboard a bus, under the eye of a large, beefy, but far from stupid sergeant. The bus took them to a railroad station, and the train they boarded there took them north to a training camp.
Blade did his basic training at a camp in the East Riding of Yorkshire-a name common to both England and Englor. They were not far from Whitby. In Home Dimension, Whitby was a fishing and coastal port and a resort town. In Englor it was the same, but it also supported a fair-sized base for the Imperial Navy and two airfields for the Imperial Air Force. Sailors, soldiers, and airmen on business or liberty packed the town's narrow streets, sometimes seeming to outnumber the local inhabitants. They gave the town a lively night life-sometimes a good deal livelier than the local inhabitants wanted.