Джеффри Лорд - Undying World

It was unthinkable that Richard Blade, of all the men in the world, should be impotent. Yet it had happened. He was in the prime of life, with a massive and superbly conditioned body, a keen and highly trained mind, and yet the fact had to be faced-he was a member of the limp phallus club.

He did not believe it at first-could not believe it. Nor could he bring himself to confide in anyone, not even Dr. Saxton Colby, the psychiatrist for Project Dimension X. In any case Dr. Colby-the only medical man in England with a security clearance high enough to enable him to work with the Project-had enough on his mind at the moment. Blade's replacement had gone through the computer once and had returned raving mad. He was now in a sanitarium in Scotland where, as Dr. Colby told J and Lord Leighton, he sat on his bed all day and stared at the wall.

«He repeats,» the doctor said, «one sentence over and over. He never says anything else. Never.»

The worm has a thousand heads. The worm has a thousand heads.

When Lord L and J asked for a prognosis, the doctor had shrugged and had given them a straight answer. «In my opinion the man will never be sane again. He's a vegetable now and he'll remain one. I don't know what he encountered out there in Dimension X, and I don't want to know, but it was horrible enough to drive him right out of his mind. Either that or the computer itself is to blame. The stress of going through the machine, of having the molecular structure of his cortex altered, was enough to send him around the bend.»

J had little to say. He had long been bitterly opposed to the Project. Lord Leighton's viewpoint was different from that of J or Dr. Colby. To the old man it was a simple manifestation of the law of averages. It was bound to happen sooner or later and now it had.

«Most unfortunate,» his Lordship said, «but I refuse to blame myself or the computer. The lad was simply not up to it. I doubt that any man is up to it-with the single exception of Richard Blade.»

Dr. Colby departed to catch a train back to Scotland. J and Lord Leighton were alone in the restricted area of the Tower Computer Complex. His Lordship sat like a gnome behind his old desk, his polio-ruined legs sprawled before him; now and then he rubbed the pain in his humped back. He regarded J with yellow lion eyes in which lurked a question.

«You're not going to mention any of this to the boy?»

Lord L, who was somewhere in his eighties, only referred to Richard Blade as a boy when he was preparing to make a sentimental pitch. J knew this. He narrowed his eyes at the old man. He knew what was coming and he intended to have no part of it, in fact to fight it every step of the way. Blade, whom he loved as his own son, had suffered enough, had done far more than his share in the damnable adventure called Project Dimension X.

But he decided to bide his time. The old man was a formidable opponent and J did not like to confront him except in cases of dire necessity. For the moment he temporized.

«I won't have to tell him anything,» he said. «Richard was there when you brought Dexter back through the computer. He saw the state the man was in, so he must know. Who better? Richard has been out in that hell seven times.»

Lord L opened his mouth, then closed it. He sensed J's mood and decided to alter his tactics. He would, of course, get his way in the end.

«It really is too bad about Dexter,» he said mildly. «Of course he will be taken care of as long as he lives. But I just don't understand it. We must have failed somewhere in the tests-the man had a weakness we didn't detect. Richard never suffered any permanent ill effects.»

J was silent. Lord L doodled on a scrap of paper and sighed. «I suppose we shall just have to begin training another man.» He beamed his sweetest smile at J. «Unless, of course, we can prevail on the boy to-«

J had had enough. The smarmy old bastard. Who in bloody hell did he think he was fooling?

He told the old man to stop using the collective pronoun. «I am not having any part of it,» he said. «Richard is retired, and if I have anything to do with it he's going to stay retired. I know what's going on in that scheming old brain, Leighton, and I will advice Blade against listening to you. I also intend to tell him what happened to Dexter-exactly and in detail-that the man is a hopeless maniac and will never be well again.»

The old boffin did not flare as J expected. Instead he contrived to look hurt but continued to smile. «As though I would ask the lad to come back, after all he has done. You must think of me as an insensitive monster, J, if you believe that. I know the terrors the dear boy has faced on his trips through the computer. I know the dreadful strain he has been under, and that he has discharged his patriotic duty to England many times over. If it were not for the fact that we are so close to a breakthrough in teleportation, actually on the brink of being able to mine DX, to bring back every sort of treasure from DX into our own dimension, I wouldn't dream of even suggesting-«

J could not listen to any more. He placed his Homburg squarely on his head and walked to the door. There he turned and pointed his rolled umbrella at his Lordship like a spear.

«The hell you wouldn't dream of suggesting. You will! And I can't stop you. But I can damn well warn Dick, tell him about that poor fellow up in Scotland and advise him with all my heart not to listen to you.»

After J left, Lord Leighton sat for a moment behind his desk. Presently he got up and paced the office, dragging his feet, rubbing the pain in his hunched back, his eyes half closed. His thin white hair floated like a halo over a pink scalp, giving him a saintly air that was misleading. But he was no sinner, either. He was a scientist, one of the best in the world, and right now he had a job to do.

He hated the necessity of sending Richard Blade to Dimension X again, but how did they expect him to work with imperfect instruments? Other men simply could not do the job, he thought. Why couldn't J understand his position? Why did J insist on making him out to be such an inhumane monster?

He took a list of names from a desk drawer and examined it, ticking off one name after the other. He shook his head. They were all good men-Robbins, Stanbury, Hunt, Swinton, Peterson-all adequately trained and conditioned, as much as any man could be for an adventure in Dimension X. But they all had one fault in common. They lacked perfection. Only Richard Blade was perfect for the job at hand. And they all lacked experience. Only Blade had that, had been through the computer, had survived in Dimension X and had managed to return with his health and sanity. Not that there hadn't been a few complications-there had. No denying the boy had had some bad times. There had been the drinking, the sexual fury, the total blackouts and the bouts of depression. One had to expect that when a brain was exposed to the computer so many times.

Yet the boy had survived. His body was healthy and his mind clear. And he would, if it was put to him the right way, go through the computer again. Of that Lord Leighton was certain.

He picked up a phone and dialed Blade's flat. Let J rant all he liked, he thought, Project DX came first. While he waited, he crumpled the list of names and flung it at a wastebasket. None of them would do. None of them could survive out there. Only Blade could do it.

The phone rang on and on. Lord L scowled. Where could the lad be? He had been calling for a week now, and never any answer. And yet Blade must be in London. He was not a man to disobey orders and it was understood that he was never to leave the city without giving MI6A an address and phone number. In point of fact, Blade was supposed to be on twenty-four-hour call. Lord L knew little of MI6A and cared less. He knew J had been in MI6 before being assigned to Project DX security and, he supposed, that meant that Blade was still some sort of secret agent, and still bound by the agency's rules.