That was just a start. The room was more than sixty feet on a side and not only clean, but luxuriously furnished and well maintained. There were about forty human beings in it, and more than a hundred androids at work bathing them, massaging them, serving them food and drink, even carrying them about in small sedan chairs of light metal and plastic. It was not an orgy-only one couple was making love-or any sort of party that Blade could imagine.
He sniffed the air carefully for drugs but could detect none. Yet all the people were dull-eyed and languid in their movements, as oblivious to his presence as if he'd been another of the androids. Something certainly had their attention fogged and confused, even if it weren't drugs.
As Blade finished his tour of the room, the redhead who'd been getting the massage turned over and looked at him. She lay with her chin in one hand, obviously trying to decide whether to invite him to join her. Finally, she shook her head. «No,» she said in a sleepy voice, «no, I have taken it only through the Inward Eye. It would be too Physical to change the way now.» She rolled back over on her stomach and seemed to drift off to sleep.
There was that «Inward Eye» again, whatever it was. Mystery was piling itself on mystery. Apparently the Inward Eye could be a sex substitute, but so could a great many other things. The redhead hadn't told Blade very much!
Then he realized, with a mild shock, that even if the woman had beckoned to him, he wouldn't have gone. Not that she wasn't attractive. In fact, she was breathtakingly beautiful-long-limbed, exquisitely curved, with great green eyes, that flaming head of red hair, full lips, everything she needed.
In fact, she was too beautiful, too perfect. She was like one of those fashion models turned by make-up, diet, and exercise into an Image of Beauty rather than a living woman. Blade had never cared for that sort of woman in Home Dimension, and this woman was even worse.
Blade looked around the room again, and with a further shock realized something he hadn't clearly noticed before. Every woman and every man in the room had that same quality of unnatural beauty, health, and personal perfection. The more clearly he realized this, the less plausible it seemed.
The android who'd escorted him was standing by the platform. Beyond the platform another corridor opened off the room. Blade could see lighted doorways on either side. He headed off down the corridor, determined to explore further.
He found himself moving through an even stranger world than the big room. All the rooms here were also spotlessly clean and beautifully kept, with a decadent display of cushions and tapestries, jewels and polished metal, weird abstract sculptures, and still more weird and abstract paintings, carved and inlaid furniture.
In the center of every room was an enormous bed. About half of these beds were empty, although some had androids busily at work on them. The others were occupied, always by a single person who was apparently sound asleep.
All of these sleepers wore metal mesh helmets on their heads, with solid, heavy bands around their temples. All wore black masks over their eyes. Otherwise they were completely naked.
Beside the bed of each sleeper stood a large, polished, black metal box mounted on four wheels. Wires led from it to the metal helmets. On top were a control panel and a series of slots. Two androids stood beside each box, apparently keeping a close watch on it and on the sleeper.
Although they seemed to be sound asleep, the people in the beds also seemed to be having some rather interesting dreams. Several were kicking furiously or churning their legs in running movements. Blade saw two men with erections and one woman writhing in the grip of orgasm.
At last Blade felt he'd seen enough on this floor. He led the android back to the platform and motioned toward the shaft. The platform lurched into the air, then dropped through the hole in the floor.
Blade examined eight different floors in the building before deciding there was no point in going on. With minor variations, each floor was the same. A large room at one end, with a corridor leading off it. On each floor sixty to a hundred of the private rooms and sixty to a hundred people. About half the people asleep and wired into the black boxes, the other half in the large room being tended by the androids or (very rarely) talking or making love to each other. Always a small army of blue-clad worker androids-at least two for every human being. Always the languid movements and the blank stares, the apathetic manner, and the inhuman perfection of the human bodies.
Blade realized that he had not only seen enough, he couldn't really stand seeing any more for the moment. The people of this city seemed to grow more weird and incomprehensible the more he learned about them! They were not dead, but they hardly seemed to be doing much he could call living.
He'd walked into a city of the living dead, and his first impulse was to walk right back out of it again. Still, there was too great a mystery here to leave behind, not to mention too much that might be worth bringing back to Home Dimension.
There might even be a chance to help these people-if they weren't past wanting help, or even realizing that they might need it.
Blade didn't realize until he started back down how long he'd taken in his exploration of the building. Through a window he could see dawn creeping across the city. If the woman hadn't been discovered and released by the workers, she might have suffocated. At the very least, she'd be trying to scream her head off. When the android let him off the platform at the bottom of the shaft, Blade practically sprinted down the corridor to the room where he'd left the woman.
She was still there, alive, and quietly asleep rather than unconscious or hysterical. She'd certainly done her best to get free-her wrists were raw from the chafing of the rope. Seeing that she wasn't going to get free though, she'd settled down to regain her strength.
This woman was formidably cool-headed and competent-dangerously so, if she remained an enemy. It wouldn't be enough just to interrogate her. He'd have to win her over, as a friend or an ally. Otherwise he'd have to kill her outright, keep her a prisoner, or spend the rest of his time in the city of the living dead trying to look in all directions at once. Blade didn't like any of these alternatives.
Blade ordered two of the workers to bring him a meal, for two Masters. When the meal came, he set the woman's tray aside and emptied his own. The food and cooking were superb-better than Blade had eaten in most expensive Home Dimension restaurants. There people obviously had settled their priorities a long time ago. Never mind if the gardens ran to wilderness or the soldiers ran amuck-as long as the baths were hot and the steaks were rare, all was right with the world.
Yet how did this explain the woman he'd taken prisoner, so skilled and deadly that it had nearly been the other way around? She certainly had not achieved her skill through a lifetime of sybaritic self-indulgence and being waited on hand and foot by androids!
Blade looked at the woman and realized that she was awake and looking at him. He smiled. «The androids have brought a meal for you. If I untie you so that you can eat, will you promise not to call out?»
Their eyes met, and she nodded slowly. Blade guessed he could trust her, but decided to make sure. He sent the serving androids out into the corridor, then closed the door and dragged the table and several chairs in front of it. That would delay the woman in getting out or the androids in getting in. Only then did he take off the woman's gag and untie her wrists. He left her ankles bound and sat in a chair between the bed and the door with his rifle across his lap while she ate.