He crossed a vast lobby to where a bank of elevators hung motionless, their machinery as dead as the robots. Blade began to search for a stair, wondering if he had the strength to climb a mile into the sky, when he heard a faint whirring sound. He found the source at the far end of the elevator bank. One small lift, nothing but a series of barren cages, was in operation. Like empty boxes on a chain the little cages constantly ascended and descended on the far side.
Blade hesitated, still wary, and for the first time the voice spoke to him. Spoke in his brain. There was no outward sound, no echo in the great lobby, nothing but the neutral and unshaded voice, pure sound, speaking clear in his mind. Wearily he wiped his sweat away again and prepared to obey. Sound telepathy.
In his brain the voice said: "Step into one of the cages, Richard Blade. Ascend to me. Fear nothing. When you have reached my level I will speak again."
Blade stepped into a moving box and was carried upward. The journey was slow and seemed endless. There were no doors, no windows, apparently no floor stops, and when the lobby vanished from sight he was in a tube of steel being borne upward. And up and up and up, The voice spoke to him again: "Soon you will come to a light. Step off the cage there."
Up and up. He saw the light sliding down to meet him. As the box slid past, Blade stepped off and was in a narrow, upward-slanting tunnel of steel. A light glowed at the top of the tunnel. Blade made for it. He pa.s.sed under it and through an open door and into a vast open rotunda. It was open to the sky on all sides and guarded only by a railing. Moonlight drenched it and Blade caught his breath. To the south, far off beyond the wall, he could see the fires of the Jedd camp.
The voice came back. "There is a ladder near where you now stand. Find it and climb "to the next level."
Blade ascended the ladder. He was weak now, still drenched in sweat, and the head pains came with ever-increasing frequency. He could feel the tumors growing in his armpits and groin. How soon would the crazy laughter begin?
He was halfway up the ladder when the voice spoke to him: "You are dying of plague, Richard Blade. You know it and I know it. But you will live yet a time. Long enough to do something for me, the one thing I cannot do for myself."
Blade stared up, his big hands white-knuckled on the rungs of the steel ladder. "How do you know my name?"
"I have followed your every move, and known your every thought, since you arrived in my dimension."
Blade halted just beneath a square opening that led to the level above. "You understand that? You know of computers and X Dimensions?"
Laughter in his brain. "I understand the concepts. But do not waste time. Climb. I am in need of you."
Blade climbed up through the aperture and found himself in a high-walled room of steel. A gleaming square room with no openings. In the exact center of the room was a high tank on stilts of metal. It too was square, about forty by forty feet and twenty feet in depth. A ladder led up the side to a runway atop the tank.
In his brain the voice spoke again: "Stop now. Try to understand what I say. I depend on you."
Blade put his hands on his hips and scowled around him. He might be dying of plague, as indeed he was, but the calm a.s.surance, the superiority, of the bodiless voice was beginning to irk him.
"Where are you?" he asked.
Voice: "I am in the tank. As you will see presently. But now that you are here and cannot leave, and must do as I ask, I will take some little time for explanation. The plague will not kill you immediately and I, I have stood my pain for ages. I can bear it a little longer. I would have you understand, Blade."
Blade put a hand on his sword. "Understand what?"
Voice: "About the Jedds. When they were a great people and ruled the world. Our world. You have seen the robots?"
"I have seen them."
Voice: "They are part of the joke. A great cosmic joke. It was the old Jedds who invented the robots. But they did their work too well, the robots soon surpa.s.sed the Jedds and took over and sent them into exile. Far back in the beginning of time, this was, and ever since the Jedds, the humans, have been trying to find their way back here to the land of the Kropes. For so the robots called themselves. Kropes."
Blade frowned. He was sick, very sick, yet found himself with the will and strength to grow angry with this voice. Why the anger he could not understand. But it was there. He was beginning to hate.
Blade said: "Why do you tell me all this?"
Voice: "It amuses me. And can do no harm. And I would strike a bargain with you."
"What sort of bargain?"
"In time, in time. Listen, it was the custom of the Jedds to destroy all their robots when they reached a certain age. They were junked, cannibalized, and new robots made from the parts saved. I, who speak to you now, was a robot and I was in turn discarded and torn apart. But that one time they were careless, the Jedds. My brain was not destroyed as usually was done, the thousands of parts not beaten into a fine powder as was the custom. Instead, a lazy Jedd flung my brain into a pond. I lay in that ooze for centuries and somehow, someway, life came to me. Real life and real intelligence. My own. And I began to grow. I was cunning and I learned how to hide myself. And all the time, over all the long eons, I grew. And at last I had my revenge on the Jedds. I ruled. I invented the Kropes. I built the marvels you have seen. The wall and this tower and all the rest. I built it with my brain. With my will. Are you familiar with the theory of telekinesis, Blade?"
Blade"s head was spinning. Fever flamed in him and things began to shift slightly out of focus. He took a firmer grip on himself and answered, "I know the theory. I have never seen it work. To create actual physical things by sheer power of will, by willing them into existence."
Laughter in his brain. For a moment Blade feared it was his own, the dying manic laughter of plague, then shook it off. He had yet a little time, and in spite of all he still hoped.
Voice: "You have seen it, Blade. Look around you and see it again. But enough, to our bargain!"
"I am sick. Ill. I have a great tumor that is killing me. Even my will cannot cure it. But you, Blade, you with your sword can cut the tumor out and destroy it and I will be well again. You will do this?"
Blade stared defiantly up at the tank. "Why should I?
You are no friend to me. Why should I, who am myself dying, help you to escape death? On the contrary, I would rather have you die. Then the Jedds can come into this land and build it anew for themselves and their children. No. I refuse. You get no help from me."
A different kind of laughter in his brain now.
Voice: "I said a bargain, Blade. If you help me I will permit the Jedds entrance into my land of Kropes. I will aid them in any manner I can. I will put my robots at their disposal, to do all manner of work, and though I shall rule I will do it with kindness and understanding and the Jedds will remain a free people under their young Empress."
Mitgu. The Golden Princess. Blade shook his head to clear it. His temples were pounding now, the fever flaring higher, the loathsome buboes growing like vile toads in his groin and armpits. He would never see her again.
He stared at the shining tank. Moisture gleamed and dripped on the metal, a reddish exudation he had not noticed before. Then his own sweat blinded him again.
"And if I do not make this bargain?"
Voice: "I will die in time. But that will be long coming and before I die I will destroy the Jedds. I know your plans, Blade. When two days have pa.s.sed I will remain quiet and keep my robots immobilized. The Jedds, as agreed, will come into my land. I will permit them beyond the Shining Gate. I will wait. Then I will send the flame and destroy them every one. To the last Jedd child. What do you say to that, Blade?"
Blade wiped sweat from his eyes with trembling fingers and did not answer. The tank was spinning now, before his eyes, like a great centrifuge. He was so d.a.m.ned weak!
Voice: "Do not underestimate my powers, Blade. It was I who sent the plague upon the Jedds, time and again, to keep them weak. It was either that or destroy them utterly, and I am not cruel for cruelty"s sake."
Blade walked to the ladder at the side of the tank. "I will do as you wish." Fast, now. Quickly. Do not think lest the voice divine those thoughts. Act. Now.
He reached the top of the ladder and stood on the runway surrounding the tank. In the tank, all but submerged in a red liquid that gave off a faint smell of brine, floated the brain. It was the size of a small whale. Blade began to walk around the runway, loosening his sword in its sheath.
The enormous brain nearly filled the tank. The lobes were well demarcated and the convolutions writhed in complex whorls of pink and blue-gray tissue.
Voice: "You see the tumor, Blade?"
He saw it. Springing from the right frontal lobe, rooted deep through the dura mater and into the tender arachnoid and pia mater, was a monstrous and sickly white growth. The tumor was nearly as large as Blade himself. He went farther up the runway to examine it. He had a decision to make and he would get only one chance. Frantically, pushing everything else out of his mind, he strove to remember his anatomy, cursing himself for the many times he had dozed through cla.s.s at Oxford.
He said, "I see the tumor. It is large and goes deep. Shall I begin now?"
Silence. It drew out. Then the voice said, "Begin."
Blade drew his sword and leaped from the runway to land on the floating brain. His feet sank a bit into the spongy cortex and he slipped and nearly fell, then regained his footing. He began to make his way slowly toward the ugly mushroom of the tumor, stepping carefully over the deep sulci that separated the convolutions. Suddenly, out of his own memory file, came remembrance of one of Lord Leighton"s droning lectures.
Disrupt the axons of the granule cells in the molecular layer.
Blade reached the tumor and stopped. He raised his sword, and hesitated. There was a new flare of pain in his own skull. A different, but familiar pain. Lord L was reaching for him again.
The voice shrieked: "Get on with it. Cut out the tumor, Blade. Cut it out!"
Whatever their barbarities, Blade thought, the Jedds were human. They deserved their chance. This thing, this monstrous pure brain had outgrown all humanity and was, in essence, evil. It deserved to die. It must die.
Blade leaped over the spreading white tumor. With both hands he raised his sword and plunged it deep into soft pink-blue tissue. He cut and slashed and tore, using all his strength, summoning his last energies, and his iron blade ravaged the brain like a wolf might a tender lamb. Sweat poured from him and Blade heard himself cursing. He was knee deep in reddish fluid. He fell and nearly slipped down the lobe into the tank, but recovered by seizing a ma.s.s of tissue and digging in with his nails. All the time he was slashing with his sword.
A scream filled the mile-high tower. It shook on its foundations, trembling like a reed as a vast black wind blew through it. Blade hacked grimly away.
The tower spire was in darkness now. Dense black clouds enveloped it. Lightning drove golden forks into the gloom. The brain moved and heaved beneath Blade. He kept on cutting away in a frenzy of hate and fear. He was gouging out huge gobbets of brainstuff and flinging them aside. The brain lunged upward in the tank, like a fish leaping, and Blade clung for his life. In his ears, in his brain, was one long ascending scream of terror and death.
Then new pain. Blade was stricken, paralyzed. He dropped his sword and it slid down the brain and into the tank. Blade sank to his knees as the pain ripped him into shreds. His head left his body, torn away by lightning, and the top of the tower parted and Blade"s head was propelled up and out into the night sky. He hurtled toward the moon, full and splendid, a mammoth gold piece in the sky. And suddenly, writ large across the moon in Gothic script, in Lord Leighton"s crabbed hand, he saw the words, Welcome Home, Richard.
Chapter Nineteen.
Police Constable William Higgins was within six months of taking his pension and retiring. He was a big man with a comfortable girth, one of the old school of London bobbies, and what he lacked in formal education he more than made up in tact and patience. Thirty years on the force taught a man something. If it didn"t there was no hope for him.
So many years on the force also taught a PC to recognize a gentleman when he saw one. A toff, a n.o.b, boffin, call them what you would, there was always something indefinable, and definitely recognizable, about them.
PC Higgins" beat led him down Whitehall into Parliament Street and thence, by a left turn, into Bridge Street and onto Westminister Bridge. On this night, with Big Ben just gone ten and a raw mist drifting up from the Thames, Higgins huddled into his uniform greatcoat, settled his helmet more firmly against the wind and paused to look down the nearly deserted bridge. It was not a night for pleasure strolls.
PC Higgins made a deep sound in his throat that sounded like, "Oh, er, Lord lumme! Looks like a b.l.o.o.d.y jumper."
Cautiously, walking as softly as his large and heavily-shod feet would permit, he began to approach the tall, elderly man who stood, both hands on the bridge parapet, gazing down at the tide sliding muddily down to Graves-end.
As the constable drew near he heard the man talking to himself. The accents were well bred, definitely uppercla.s.s, and PC Higgins knew he had a gentleman to deal with. He continued his stealthy approach, hoping to get an arm around the man before he could rouse himself and jump. Careful, Higgins warned himself. Some of these leapers were pretty spry and determined, once they made up their minds to do the Dutch.
One last step and he closed a big hand around the man"s arm and sighed with inward relief. Had the blighter now.
The man was indeed a toff. Elderly and distinguished in appearance, but with his Homburg at a rakish slant and his tie loose at the collar. From him, as he turned quietly enough to face Higgins, came a strong waft of whiskey that made Higgins wince. Drunk. Drunk as Billy-be-d.a.m.ned.
"Here now," said PC Higgins. "What"s all this, sir? Won"t do, you know. A gentleman like you must have a better place to loiter than this cold and blasty bridge. Eh, sir? Shall we be getting along to it, then? I"ll walk a way with you and find a taxi."
"We saved him."
PC Higgins released his grip on the man"s arm and stared. "Saved who, sir?" He cast a look over the parapet at the turgid river gurgling beneath the arches. What in b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l? Was there somebody down there after all?
"We saved Blade," said the tall gentleman. "He came back to us dying of plague, you know, but we saved him. Narrow thing, though. If it hadn"t been for the drugs we had flown in from the States we would have lost him. G.o.dd.a.m.n his Lordship to h.e.l.l!"
PC Higgins tapped him on the shoulder in a kindly manner. "I"m sure you did, sir, and I"m glad it came out all right. Now, how about a little walk with me? It"s after ten, and cold, and home is a cozy place to be."
"I have been walking," the man said. "Walking and walking and walking. I must have walked over half of London. And I have been drinking."
PC Higgins had his moments. He smiled now and said, "Do tell me, sir. It"s the last thing I would have thought."
"I have, though," the man said. He fell in step with the constable, who still held him lightly by the arm. PC Higgins breathed easier. It was going to be all right. No trouble of arrest. Now if he could find one of those sodding cabs that always disappeared when you needed them most.
A gust of Scotch blew into his wind-reddened face. The tall old man said, "I suppose you want some identification, officer. My name is J." He made no effort to produce his wallet or cardcase.
Higgins let it pa.s.s. J was good enough. Drunks came up with some mighty queer answers.
"I"ve been drinking all night," the man said. "Drinking and drinking and drinking. Making a fool of myself. Don"t care. Couldn"t help it. Glad I did. Because they saved him, you see. Saved Blade."
PC Higgins nodded. "You told me, sir. Now if we could step along a bit livelier, sir? I"ve still my patrol to finish."
"He came back raving and near dead," said the man. "Took the fools forever to diagnose plague. Can"t really blame them, I suppose. Like bubonic and yet not bubonic. Couldn"t find the bacillus pestis, you see."
"I"m sure," said PC Higgins and rolled his eyes skyward. You got all kinds. He thought of the snug cottage in the country, just purchased with his savings, and of the roses he meant to grow. Five months to go. Only five months. Lord gimme strength, he prayed.
They left the bridge and the constable cast around for a taxi. Not an effing cab in sight. Naturally. He took the man"s arm again and led him gently down Bridge Street. There was an all-night stand down Whitehall a way.
"He was yellow," said the man. He pulled his arm away from the constable and pointed to a traffic stripe glinting in the street lights. "As yellow as that divider strip."
PC Higgins made comforting sounds. "Now, now, sir.
No need to dwell on it. I"m sure the gentleman is going to be all right."
"He will. He is going to get well. But no thanks to them, to those fools of doctors. They thought he had simple jaundice. I had to do it! I had to insist that they make a culture and find a growth media, search for some sort of bug. You"d have thought I was the doctor. And it was his Lordship, d.a.m.n him to h.e.l.l; but give credit where it is due, it was Lord L who got the drugs in from the States."
PC Higgins turned his face away from the blast of Scotch breath. Enough to make a man drunk just smelling it.
"I am very drunk," said the man.
The constable nodded heavily, gravely. "That you are, sir. Bed is where you belong. Just as soon as we find you a taxi."
"I am drunk, drunk, drunk," said the man. He skipped a few steps, whirled, leaped into the air and clicked his heels, then faced the constable. "Haven"t been this drunk in forty years. Since I came down from Cambridge. Did I tell you my name was J? Are you going to arrest me?"
PC Higgins tipped back his helmet and scratched his balding brow. Lumme! This gent really had his load on. Where in the bunking h.e.l.l was a taxi? The cabstand, now looming into view, was deserted.
"No need to arrest you, sir. Unless you become disorderly, and I"m sure a gentleman like you, "
The man called J leaned toward the constable, supporting himself by clinging to a lamp standard. His eyes were glazed and owlish. He said, "A gentleman like me does some very queer things, constable. Things you wouldn"t dream of, things you wouldn"t want to dream of!"
Ignoring the cold wind, PC Higgins took off his helmet and wiped his brow with a huge colored handkerchief. "I"m sure you do, sir. And I"m sure I wouldn"t, Oho, there is a taxi now! Just pulling up."
PC Higgins put his whistle to his mouth and puffed out a mighty blast. The taxi made a U-turn and came back to them. The constable bundled his charge into the back seat. "There you are, sir. You"ll be fine, you will. Now just go home and have a nice sleep."
The man leaned out the window. For a moment his eyes cleared and there was concern on his face. His face was steady. "Thank you, constable. And I would appreciate it if you would just forget this, forget everything I said, whatever it may have been." He fell back into the seat and gave the driver an address in Belgravia.
PC Higgins spoke as the taxi pulled away. "I"ll forget it, sir. With pleasure."
PC Higgins turned and started back toward Westminster Bridge. Five months until he took his pension. He grinned. Five months wasn"t so long. Then he could grow roses, and rest his feet.