"I am filthy," said Blade. "I have been long on the march."
"I will cleanse you. Come now."
Blade fell to his knees beside her on the bed, still clutching the jade statue, and leaned to kiss her. Her eyes were narrowed, cloaking the green depths, her mouth half open and quivering and she put her hands on his face and gently drew him down.
The pain clawed him like a tiger. Blade gasped and fell forward and felt her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s on his face, her fingers entwined in his thick hair.
"Blade! What, Blade? What is it?" He heard himself uttering strange sounds, senseless noises. She was raising his head now, coddling him and crying and peering into his eyes.
Blade fell through the jade curtain. He was very tiny now, a Tom Thumb, a midget of a midget, and he fell into her eyes. She s.n.a.t.c.hed at him, with an enormous hand, but too late and he was gone. Down and down, falling and falling, into greenness that shouted at him and shocked and hurt him and was so green that it could not be true. He fell into a green splashing fountain and was shunted into a drain and was gaining speed and more speed and at last was shot out into a green sky where he knew he would be forever and eternally lost. He went curving around a green orb that had Blade printed on it in green letters.
He was in an echo chamber and the sound waves kept thrumming at him and would not cease: Blade - Blade - Blade - Blade - blade - blad-bla-bl-b. Nothing.
Chapter Nineteen.
J, listening to the tapes in the audio and projection room far beneath the Tower, frowned now and again at the jade statuette. Exquisite workmanship. No jade like it in the modern world, so said the lab report. The statuette contained a new element, a mineral unknown today. A famous mineralogist was on his way from the States. J shrugged. No great treasure there. Lord L had already admitted that this second venture into Dimension-X had been another failure from the material standpoint.
Lord Leighton was not at all discouraged. He was jubilant. The memory molecule had worked to perfection and he had, to use his former expression, tapped Blade"s memory tank and poured the stuff out of him like wine from a barrel. It was all on the tapes.
Blade, under deep hypnosis, spoke in a low, but perfectly audible, monotone. In nine hours he had filled tape after tape.
""85 the Mongs are born hors.e.m.e.n, nomads, and what we would call barbarians. They are short, swarthy of skin, with powerful legs and arms and big chests. Some of the women are beautiful, all are as savage as the men"85" J reached to switch off the tape. It was his third hearing. He yawned and rubbed his eyes and was beginning to stuff a pipe when Lord Leighton came in.
His Lordship, J conceded, looked full of beans today. He must have been sleeping better of late. The yellow eyes were clear and even the polio-stricken legs had a new energy. Today Lord L was wearing a discreetly chalk-striped gray lounge suit that somewhat mitigated his hump. His tie was a horror, of course, but then it always was. J, who was prissy in the matter of dress, tried not to look at the red and yellow monstrosity as he held a match to his pipe and asked about Blade.
Lord L clapped his withered hands together and rubbed them. "Fine, fine. Still sleeping it off. Should be ready to leave in a few hours. We"ll give the lad a nice long spot of leave. About six months, I should say. Then we can start tuning him up for the next venture."
J was silent. No use voicing his doubts and fears. No use in this world. That particular die was cast.
Lord L was hobbling around the audio room, chuckling to himself and clapping his hands now and then. It was a nervous habit and it did get on J"s nerves.
After a few moments he said, "Something is amusing you, Leighton? Top secret? Or do you want to share it?"
"My dear fellow! I"m sorry. Nothing, really, but I can"t help chuckling when I think of Blade knighting himself. Sir Blade! Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Lord Leighton"s laugh reminded J of a file in a lock.
J saw nothing amusing about it. "He needed a t.i.tle to impress those people. He took it."
Lord L held up a hand. "Do you know, J, a thought has just occurred to me. Why not get the boy on the next Honors list? I am sure I can arrange it. I can swing a bit of weight, you know."
Sir Richard Blade! J pondered. Why not? They were handing them out to actors and jockeys and brewers and soon, G.o.d save us all, there would be a rock and roll singer dubbed Knight. He smiled then.
He shook his head. "No. I think not. Call too much attention to Blade,, for one thing, and we don"t want that. Another, and I am sure about this because I know d.i.c.k rather well, is that he wouldn"t have any part of it. d.i.c.k Blade is a very real person, Leighton. He doesn"t need a t.i.tle to sh.o.r.e up his ego. He"d just laugh at us and think we were bonkers."
Lord L chuckled again and shuffled crawfishlike to a chair and eased his old body into it. "All right, man. No need to get testy about it. It was only a pa.s.sing thought." He took a sheaf of yellow paper from his pocket and began to cover it with cabalistics in a tiny hand.
J supposed that he had sounded testy. His relief at having Blade back safely was so great that he didn"t quite know what to do with himself, laugh or cry or go out and get horribly drunk - a thing he hadn"t done since Boat Race night in 1928.
Lord L looked at J with his lion eyes. He tapped paper with pencil.
"This second trip into Dimension-X has pretty well proved out my theory, J. G.o.d! I wish I could publish it. Heh-heh-heh-heh. Shock half of them into asylums and have the other half on me like vultures. A brand-new and contra-theory of the nature of the universe! There is not one universe, there are many. Dozens, hundreds, thousands! Each in its own dimension and perceivable only by brains attuned to it. G.o.d, J! When I think of it!"
Lord Leighton swung his arm about violently, cutting a swathe in empty air. "There! You see that. I just swept my arm through an entire world, containing what, and peopled by whom? We cannot know, J, because our brains are incapable of seeing it. It cannot exist for us. But for Blade, ah! For the lad..."
J"s pipe had gone out. He ignored it. Very quietly he said, "We"ll lose Blade one day, you know. Bound to. Law of averages. He just can"t keep going out into Dimension-X time after time and expect to..."
Lord Leighton was paying no attention. He was making marks on paper again and mumbling, "The thing was that the others were content to stop with the s.p.a.cetime continuum, the fourth, and call it quits. Donkeys! The next logical step was inevitable, clear as b.u.mf in the living room, but nothing is ever clear to fools and..."
"Leighton!"
The old man looked up, "Sorry, J. What is it?"
"When can I see Blade? When are you going to release him?"
Lord L pulled out a ponderous old-fashioned watch. "Soon now. He"s all yours. Had all his tests, been cleared, fit as a fiddle except for those minor wounds in his leg and side. Hmmm, I"ve had him four days now, eh? Good. Fine. That"s enough. Soon as he comes out of hypnosis and has a final check he"s all yours, J. Give him a bonus, a whopping big one, mind you, and tell him to have fun. I won"t need him for another six months or so."
As J left the Tower he suddenly thought of Blade"s girl, Zoe. Saucy little wench! Sticking her nose into things that didn"t concern her. He had to smile as he tried to hail a taxi. The la.s.s had pretty well blown the Whitehall cover thing, nosing about and asking questions and using her relatives and friends. J nodded reprovingly to himself as he stepped into a taxi. The Whitehall bit had been a little ramshackle and hastily set up. Have to change it.
Blade parked the MG off the lane and vaulted the stile leading to the cottage, thinking of the last time he had cleared it with Zoe in his arms. Zoe!
He had been trying to get in touch with her for two days now. Her family didn"t know, or wouldn"t tell, where she was. Everywhere he tried he was greeted by the same vague answers: "Sorry, old man, haven"t seen her lately."
"No, Mr. Blade, I do not know where Zoe is."
"Seems to me she said something about popping over to Paris for a week or so."
"I heard she had a spot of work to do in Wales."
"No, sir. Miss Cornwall hasn"t been in her flat these past four days"85 Thank you, sir."
He unlocked the cottage, went around raising windows, then got out because the scent of her was everywhere. His heart ached with a dull ache that both pained and angered him.
He wandered down to the cliff, to the Snuggery, as she called it, and stood looking out over the Channel. It was a day of mist and intermittent sun, and a mild swell was running in to break foaming on the shingle. Gulls circled in boredom and puffins investigated the wet black rocks far beneath him. Blade lit a cigarette and let the wind carry the match away.
They had been playing the quote game that evening. She had not responded, not at all.
Blade was in love and miserable. He admitted it. He was feeling sorry for himself, which was a crime to a man like himself. Okay. He was a criminal. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Zoe! Come back to me. I need you. I want you.
He had never cared for Wordsworth. He did not, especially, care for Wordsworth now. The line just popped into his head.
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
Which line would Zoe quote back to him? There was nothing of love in the poem.
Perhaps - And then my heart with pleasure fills?
Something dark caught his eye. It lay in the tall gra.s.s where they had been making love that last night.
He took half a dozen steps and picked up the black panties, wispy and crumpled and damp now with rain and dew. Blade smiled ruefully. They had been in a hurry that night, when the phone began to ring in the cottage.
He stuffed the damp panties in his jacket pocket and started back up the lane to the cottage. Halfway there he heard it. She had never gotten around to having that sticky valve repaired. Click-click-click - click-click. She was turning off the blacktop now, into the lane.
Blade began to run.